Die Meute der Erben (2001)

Construction contractor Arno Adelmann, who retired from professional life after a heart attack three years ago, lives with his prudent housekeeper, Nancy, in a spacious villa on Lake Constance. Adelmann has his quirks, but, as the saying goes, he has a good heart. One of his habits is going after molehills that spoil his beautiful lawn with a shotgun. On Adelmann’s 77th birthday, his daughters Thekla and Bianca turn up at their father’s again, along with their husbands, though they otherwise make little time for him. They look around with eagle eyes to make sure none of the valuables they have already counted on inheriting have disappeared from the villa. The gifts they have brought, which they praise to the skies, do not exactly meet with Adelmann’s approval. Another guest is Romy, a very special friend of the birthday boy. She arrives with the much younger Claudio Barilla, whom she introduces as her reader. Since the day before, Adelmann accidentally shot at little Caro’s cat, Nancy sends him the next morning with a tray of delicacies to Caro’s mother, Ina, who has inherited the neighboring property with a house badly in need of renovation. The ceiling almost caves in on him there when it suddenly gives way. Since it is currently impossible to live in the building, which is at risk of collapse, Adelmann offers mother and daughter temporary accommodation in his house. From then on, he also takes charge of overseeing the construction work. This alerts his daughter Thekla and Bert Hübner, the husband of her younger sister Bianca, who is just as interested in the inheritance. Both fear that the expected inheritance will be diminished. When the opportunity arises, Thekla tells Ina quite openly that she considers her an inheritance hunter. After Ina withdraws, Adelmann gives his family a thorough dressing-down and even threatens to disinherit them. Thekla and her brother-in-law Bert then resort to more drastic measures: they want to have the old man declared legally incompetent. A friend of theirs, a psychotherapist and sworn expert witness, is supposed to help them by preparing a report in their favor. Bert is sure it will work, since the man still owes him something. When the two visit Romy, supposedly to get stories from her past for a book, they find her sitting dead in an armchair. She has taken belladonna poison, as she explains candidly in a video. Thekla and Bert see an opportunity to frame Ina, who runs the pharmacy that once belonged to Romy’s husband, and Claudio as a murderous couple, and to bring on a heart attack in Arno. So they hide the vial of poison among Claudio’s belongings and take the video with them. When Inspector Meissner questions them, they deliberately give him false leads. They also make the farewell letter to Claudio, the rich woman’s sole heir, disappear. Claudio is then arrested. As if Romy’s death weren’t bad enough for Adelmann, he then receives a letter from the court informing him that his daughters want to have him declared legally incompetent. Ina notices that Romy died exactly ten years after her husband’s death. Along with other oddities, this strengthens the suspicion that someone has a hand in it. So Nancy and Ina investigate, and with Bianca’s help they recover the remains of the videotape Bert destroyed. Bert has just told his wife what he thinks of her being pregnant. The hearing on Arno Adelmann’s legal competence turns out quite differently from what Thekla and Bert had expected. The expert witness, who tells Bert that he no longer owes him anything, opposes the application. Romy’s damaged video has been restored enough to make it clear that she took the poison of her own free will, and the judge hears Thekla berating Bert and complaining that she had paid 10,000 euros for such an assessment. Inspector Meissner arrests Thekla and Bert for staging a crime. The application to have Arno declared legally incompetent is rejected. Bianca apologizes to her father and confesses that she is pregnant. The old man is overjoyed that he is going to become a grandfather after all. Arno and Nancy get married.