Besondere Schwere der Schuld (2014)

The habitual criminal Joseph Komalschek, who was sentenced to life imprisonment with a finding of the particular gravity of his guilt, returns to his hometown after his release, at his own request. He had spent 30 years in prison for the double murder of his former neighbor, Anita, a barmaid with whom he was having a relationship, and her newborn child. He has always protested his innocence and was convicted solely on the basis of circumstantial evidence; in particular, the child’s umbilical cord was found among his trash. He was released after the prosecution’s application for subsequent preventive detention was rejected because of a procedural error. The three police officers who investigated the murder at the time and secured Komalschek’s conviction—Heinz Braun, Klaus Barner, and Fritz Reet—have since retired. Fearing acts of revenge, they have Komalschek watched around the clock. Klaus Barner’s son Tom, who is about 30 years old, is also part of the surveillance team. Komalschek stoically endures the rejection he encounters everywhere. He leads his watchers to key locations connected with the crime, including a disused mine where the murdered woman’s body was buried and where he accidentally discovered it while hiding the proceeds of his robberies. When Tom Barner, who is following him, loses consciousness because of mine gas, Komalschek saves his life and gives him a pocketknife. Later, Tom finds his father’s name, along with Braun’s and Reet’s, engraved on its blade. Komalschek skillfully supplies the police with so much exculpatory evidence that even they conclude the case must be reopened from the beginning, since the three investigators were apparently involved in the crime. Tom Barner, who has developed a friendly relationship with Komalschek since the mine-gas accident, delves into the trial records. At this point, Klaus Barner takes his own life. Komalschek appears at the funeral and confronts Klaus’s widow, Agnes, asking what became of Anita’s child. Komalschek knows he is the child’s father and assumes that the officers killed the baby after murdering Anita and buried it somewhere else. Only when Komalschek is looking at photographs from that period in his apartment with an old acquaintance does he notice the resemblance between Tom, sitting opposite him, and an old portrait of himself at the same age. Through tears, Agnes Barner confirms that Tom is the child they have been searching for. After Anita’s murder, which Braun and Reet committed and then pinned on Komalschek, Klaus Barner was supposed to get rid of the newborn. Instead, without his accomplices’ knowledge, he took the baby to his wife, who cared for it and raised it as her own. Klaus had later wanted to confess, but she had always stopped him from doing so, which would have exonerated Komalschek. In the end, Komalschek gives Tom some of the stolen goods hidden in the mine, says goodbye to him, and disappears forever, without seeking compensation or a pension from the justice system. All he wanted was to bring the truth to light.