Tatort S2004E24 - Ehrlicher - 35 - Teufelskreis

Their 35th case leads the inspectors Ehrlicher and Kain to the Leipzig Monument to the Battle of the Nations. There, while a neo-Nazi demonstration is taking place at the main train station, one of the local ringleaders named Linhard Banzhaff is found dead. Apparently he was pushed down from the higher gallery. An injured person lies unconscious in the elevator: Stefan Mayer-Lischinski. The commissioners determine that Banzhaff must have received a blow to the larynx before he fell into the depths of the monument. So: murder! Prosecutor Mitterer finds evidence in her files that the unemployed fitter, who has had several criminal records, has been a political activist for right-wing extremist groups for a long time.
Walter, the forensic scientist who reviews all the police videos of the demonstration, makes another important discovery: Banzhaff was at the rally before he died. The videos show that he fought there with Mayer-Lischinski, whose ex-wife tried to separate the brawlers. In the dead man's apartment, the police officers track down the common past of the two men: a photo shows them together at an anti-Stasi demonstration in 1989, and letters from Mayer-Lischinski show the disgust and hatred he later felt for the true political motives of his ex-boyfriend.
The commissioners ask themselves: How could Banzhaff afford such a luxurious apartment? Where do the many large cash deposits on the bank statements lying on the corridor floor come from? Finally, Kain and Ehrlicher surprise the senior government councilor Rita Faulhaber from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who is trying to leave the apartment through the kitchen window... The inspectors receive the news that the main suspect has escaped from the hospital. When pastor Antje Mayer-Lischinski leads Ehrlicher and Kain to her ex-husband's studio, they find the rooms completely devastated. Outside the door lurk in the dark those who want to settle accounts with the church resistance in their own way: Nico Röckmann, lawyer and agitator of the neo-Nazi demo, and Hermann Waldau, the new Leipzig neo-Nazi leader.
Röckmann knows very well how to take advantage of the police investigations – which really annoys the inspectors. When Walter discovered Rita Faulhaber of all people on the tapes of the surveillance cameras at the time of the crime in front of the Monument to the Battle of the Nations, the case took a surprising turn...