Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
1-23 of 23
- A group of young directors teamed up to explain their love for Europe in short films. This love is not uncritical and grievances are not swept under the carpet. "The Love Europe Project" combines nine of these shorts in a film in which Europe is rediscovered through the eyes and daily lives of people from different backgrounds.
- Where is Paul Holthaus? The investigative journalist Rommy Kirchhoff and his son Max are looking for the missing lobbyist Paul Holthaus, who negotiated several times in Cape Town on behalf of Lilian Norgren for her agricultural group Norgreen Life. Norgren makes it clear to Rommy that the search for the whistleblower is undesirable and that she is putting herself and the boy in danger. Rommy's former boss and friend Karin Berger now wants to find out with her where Lilian took Holthaus and why he disappeared. What scandal lies behind Norgreen Life's crop protection product Pancosal? After all, it is Lilian's biggest opponent, the Internet giant Larry Jordan, who leads the two journalists on the right track: In the Congo, the Berlin doctor Dr. Schwarz developed a drug against a form of liver cancer that is increasingly occurring in connection with the pesticide Pancosal. Larry Jordan and Lilian Norgren are fighting bitterly for Schwarz's patent, which promises a once-in-a-century business. Rommy sets off for the Congo, where the drug is being tested, while Karin Berger and Max find a trail that leads to Holthaus.
- It is an incredible story in the context of the reunification of Germany, which has only rarely played a role in the media: the story of a special unit that was supposed to investigate and solve major crimes from the time of the GDR and the turnaround. The former investigators from left to right Wolfgang Böckel, Edzard Kranz, Martina Starke, Alexander Schaefer, Ingo Dungs, Martina Schaefer-MasurZERV - The Investigators ARD media library In 1992, the ZERV - the largest SoKo in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany - began investigating crimes from the GDR and the period of reunification. The documentary series goes on a search for clues with the "real" investigators from back then. Ard In 1992, the Central Office for Government and Association Crime, or "ZERV" for short, began its work. It is the largest SoKo of the criminal police in the history of the Federal Republic - and to this day it is as good as unknown. It ends in 2000 after a nerve-wracking race against time, the statute of limitations and the pitfalls between two states. Time had to pass to be able to tell of the eight years of existence of this special commission. Too many cases were kept secret back then or swept under "the carpet", too many secrets were and still are to be guarded. For the first time, the investigators and detectives of ZERV stand exclusively in front of a camera and provide information about their work between two systems. After more than 20 years, director Heike Bittner and co-author Tom Kühne are together looking for clues again. The 30-minute documentary "ZERV - The investigators" for Das Erste takes a look at two spectacular cases of the special commission. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in December 1989, civil rights activists discovered an arms depot near Rostock. Various hunting and sporting weapons belonging to SED party leaders can also be found in the cellars of the KoKo department - the GDR's secretive commercial coordination department. The surprising thing is that there are also Western-made weapons among them. Wolfgang Böckel - today a former detective chief inspector - is to determine what the weapons are all about - where they come from. He and his colleagues meticulously follow the sales channels - and ultimately help to bring a man to court who was considered virtually untouchable: Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, former head of KoKo and responsible for foreign exchange procurement in the GDR. Martina Starke comes to Berlin from Coburg as an investigator. Actually, she has only committed to ZERV for one year. But there is one case that she can't get out of her head: a man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage in the GDR in the 1970s. To the very end, he insisted that he was not a spy. There is no longer a crime scene, only archives are available to her. The mountains of files are growing. Martina Starke hopes to find something to rehabilitate this alleged spy today. One year of ZERV turns into four years of intensive police work that Martina Starke has never experienced before. The work of the investigators takes place under difficult conditions: It is the years immediately after reunification, the new authority starts from nothing. There are no structures, no official channels, not even a building at the beginning - instead there are tons of boxes, files and cases that have to be cleared up. With a few exceptions, the investigators come from the old federal states and find themselves in a maelstrom of chaos and being overwhelmed, but also of unexpected freedoms and opportunities. The impending statute of limitations and the race against time - until the end far too few investigators will have to process far too many cases - and some files remain closed to the officials, because East was more closely connected with West and West with East in some places than expected.
