Frühling - Am Ende des Sommers (2018)

Judith Kleinke, whose family village helper Katja Baumann had helped out a few weeks earlier, has returned from the rehabilitation clinic. There is hardly any sign of her depression anymore. On the contrary, full of energy, she sets off for a job interview, hoping finally to get back to her old life. Meanwhile, Tom Kleinke asks Katja to take his youngest daughter to the vet because her new guinea pig is ill. On the way, Katja passes the scene of an accident and is horrified to realize that fate has struck the Kleinke family again: Judith Kleinke has just been killed in an accident. At a loss as to how to explain this to her daughters, Marie and Nora, Katja seeks help from Pastor Sonnleitner, partly for her own sake as well. The days that follow are difficult for everyone. Katja has to support not only the grieving family members but also Adrian, the son of her new landlord, who is in love with Nora Kleinke. The unspoken suspicion is that Judith Kleinke intended to kill herself because of her earlier depression. Katja, however, doubts this. Instead, she thinks something may be wrong with the house: not only is the guinea pig becoming ill, but Nora’s health is also deteriorating, and the plants in the house are not thriving either. Katja’s investigation has also revealed that the previous owners’ dog became ill and nearly died. When large numbers of dead ladybugs are found on the windowsill, Katja contacts the house’s previous owners and learns that they had similar problems and wanted to get rid of the “cursed” house for that reason. Katja gets in touch with a toxic-substances expert. He suspects the presence of PCB-containing materials, which were used as wood preservatives years ago and break down very slowly. The symptoms Katja has observed point to this, as do Judith Kleinke’s severe signs of poisoning. She was treated incorrectly because she was not suffering from depression but from poisoning, which ultimately also led to the tragic accident. Since the Kleinke family no longer wants to live in the old farmhouse, they move temporarily into a camper so they will not continue to be exposed to such harmful conditions. At some point, they intend to build a new, uncontaminated house on the property.