Series »Breitscheidplatz« | A piece of wood is identified

Because so much about the attack on Breitscheidplatz is still unclear, the creators were left with fiction instead of documentation. Photo: ARD Degeto Film/HR/NDR/RBB/NEUESUPER GmbH "The more you look, the more inconsistencies you notice," says Frank Laudin (Albrecht Schuch) from the North Rhine-Westphalian LKA's state security agency to his colleague Isra Al-Husseini (Bayan Layla). By this he means the circumstances of the attack on the Berlin Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz in December 2016. This scene is at the very end of the ARD series "Breitscheidplatz 19/12", which tells a fictional story about this terrible terrorist attack ten years ago in six episodes.

At the center of this story, told almost as a classic German crime thriller with an investigator duo, are the two LKA officers from North Rhine-Westphalia, who, as fictitious members of the "Ventum Investigative Commission" that existed at the time, observed and infiltrated Islamists in the greater Hildesheim area and, in the process, also temporarily monitored the Breitscheidplatz attacker Anis Amri. The final denouement of the six-part series focuses on the contradictions surrounding the suddenly ended surveillance of Anis Amri, which was also the subject of a Bundestag investigative committee. The accusation that the eviction of the left-wing Friedrichshain bar collective "Kadterschmiede" had led to the end of Amri's surveillance, which was also scandalous at the Berlin state level at the time and presented as baseless by the police, does not appear in the series at all.

The contradictions become problematic and highly topical once again against the background of the Islamist attack on the CSD.

The contradictions become problematic and highly topical again against the background of the Islamist attack on the CSD a few months ago and the much-discussed question of what role the sudden end of police surveillance of the perpetrator played here.

In the series "Breitscheidplatz 19/12" the criticism that is common in crime novels about too much official confusion and different responsibilities of the states and the federal government is addressed at length. From their office in North Rhine-Westphalia, Laudin and Al-Husseini fight against a lot of official bureaucracy and often against a politics that wants to achieve media-presentable successes after certain events such as the attack on the "Bataclan" in Paris or Nice and orders spectacular raids that often destroy lengthy police work. The two are part of a larger team. He's the typical cerebral German who seems to have the emotional life of a piece of wood when he's not having a temper tantrum. He also ruins his marriage. His colleague Isra, who comes from Syria, was a victim of IS herself as a refugee. She is played brilliantly by Bayan Layla, who can also be seen these days in the film “Three Comrades”, the adaptation of a novel by this year's winner of the German Book Prize, Shida Bazyar.

The series makers make every effort to paint a differentiated picture of the Muslim community in Germany and to show that it is primarily Muslim people who suffer from IS or Daesh, as all non-Germans affected call the Islam-fascist terrorist organization here. This also applies to the Isra family, who are severely traumatized by their memories of Syria. The Islamist circles here are all-male, violent organizations that collude and use religious associations as camouflage. This is often accompanied by appropriate music, highlighting a dark potential threat.

The big question remains whether the attempt to present this in a differentiated way will also reach the broad mainstream for which this series is designed. As a six-part crime series, "Breitscheidplatz 19/12" is well crafted and focuses heavily on the frustration of the state security officer, who is repeatedly thwarted by his BKA colleagues. It cannot be conclusively clarified whether this also has something to do with the fact that international secret services were involved here and that the German investigation had to be based on a US military operation in North Africa, which the series suggests at the very end.

"Breitscheidplatz 19/12" may be made to be exciting as a politically charged crime story, it also tries to strike a critical tone towards the authorities, but sometimes does so half-heartedly. True to the motto: If the police were allowed to do more and didn't have to work so fragmentedly, that would minimize the danger. The fact that the authorities do not always act in accordance with the rules is shown by the arrest of a Daesh member who was brutally beaten by officials in front of his small children.

The makers have obviously worked their way through the extensive mountains of files in the case. In the middle of it all is an informant who investigates for the state security agency, becomes part of the Islamist group and has contact with Anis Amri. It is difficult to say how much of what is shown in the series is actually true. But one thing becomes clear: the chapter of the attack on Breitscheidplatz and its coming to terms with it are not really closed, even ten years later.

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