...und nichts als die Wahrheit (1958)

Dr. Stefan Donat is up to his ears in debt. When Agnes Donat, who is suffering from terminal cancer, dies, she leaves Stefan her entire fortune. This is all the more astonishing because Stefan and Agnes had been divorced for years. The investigating police and prosecutor’s office also find it more than strange that Agnes changed her will in Stefan’s favor immediately before her death. The original heir was to be Mingo Fabian, the deceased woman’s cousin, who had only just turned 23. When traces of poison are discovered as well, Dr. Donat soon comes under suspicion of having deliberately killed his former wife. It is claimed that he alone among the possible suspects could have obtained the poison. Agnes’s body is then exhumed. Donat’s situation grows increasingly precarious, and he is charged with murder. Meanwhile, Mingo decides to contest the will. But she is not the one behind this move, since she, too, is friends with Stefan Donat. Rather, her partner, the lawyer Dr. Bernburger, urges her to challenge it. He has a personal motive: he intends to marry Mingo soon. As the trial proceeds, the background to the case gradually comes to light. Donat stoically endures the proceedings; he seems absent-minded, almost disinterested, and resigned to his fate. The prosecutor proves that the defendant was in Munich at the time of the crime. Donat’s defense attorney, Dr. Fein, wants his client to start fighting and tries to draw him out. Then Mingo visits in prison the opposing party in her legal action—the man she has long since fallen in love with and believes to be innocent—and Stefan finally seems to begin to emerge from his lethargy. At last, the truth comes out: Agnes had asked her ex-husband to obtain the poison so that she could be freed from her suffering and pain. Donat had fulfilled her request solely out of compassion and pity—a case of euthanasia at the patient’s request.