Kalter Engel (1986)

Winter in the Ore Mountains: Waitress Ilona Herfurth dreams of a better life for herself and her ten-year-old son, Jimmy. The divorced woman wants to buy her own restaurant and offer music and dancing for her guests. But a place of her own would cost several tens of thousands of marks, money she does not have. Together with her new boyfriend, Dietmar Freistrath, who is also a bar pianist dreaming of owning a restaurant, she comes up with a plan. Ilona grew up in a family of woodcarvers. Her foster father, Roland Gerlach, is devoted to tradition: he carves as part of a club and rejects commercial, machine-based woodturning. Ilona, however, sees the craft only in terms of its market value. One day, the elderly carver Will collapses in Gerlach’s house. He says Ilona’s name and is taken to hospital shortly afterward. He dies, and his heirs search in vain among his belongings for a box in which Will had kept his old carvings. Captain Kurt Stein is unable to collect any evidence in the old attic where the box had stood unnoticed for years. The local carving club is outraged by the box’s disappearance, as Will had intended to bequeath the old pieces to the club. Ilona and Dietmar have stolen the box. They store the stolen goods in an old mine tunnel and gradually bring the most valuable pieces back to their homes. Over time, other carvers are also robbed of their valuable pieces. When Ilona and Dietmar are once again in the tunnel to hide more stolen goods, Gerlach appears; he has long suspected his daughter’s scheme. He demands that they return the figures, but Ilona refuses. Suddenly, part of the tunnel collapses, injuring Gerlach. He is taken to hospital, and Ilona and Dietmar claim that he fell from the roof. A little later, Ilona is surprised when Gerlach travels directly from the hospital to his brother’s home by the sea. Soon afterward, part of the tunnel where Ilona and Dietmar have been storing the carvings collapses after the support beams are tampered with. They have not been there for six months, especially since only the less valuable pieces remain in the tunnel. The investigators nevertheless find the cache, as well as the remains of earlier visitors. It turns out that in 1932 Gerlach and other Communists used the tunnel as a secret meeting place. Gerlach claims not to know how the carvings got into the tunnel or who brought them there. The investigators find it suspicious that Gerlach has so far been the only one spared from the thefts. Christmas has arrived, and Ilona wants to finally carry out her plan. She waits on a group at the restaurant, which has come to the Ore Mountains as tourists. With Dietmar as their tour guide, the guests are driven by bus through the snow-covered countryside, visit a carver’s workshop, admire the valuable wooden artworks, and finally stop at the restaurant where Ilona works. When one of the guests asks where he can buy originals, Ilona leads him into a side room. In this way, she sells numerous pieces for 2,000 marks each and makes more than 18,000 marks by the end of the operation. Meanwhile, Kurt Stein suspects that Ilona may be the thief. He visits Gerlach, who indirectly confirms his suspicion. When Dietmar turns himself in to the police and confesses, the investigators are also able to arrest Ilona. She had just run into further trouble when two guests turned out to be professional dealers in stolen carvings. They would not accept that Ilona did not want to sell them any more pieces and put pressure on her. The two men are also taken to the police station.