"The encirclement"

By and with Sarah Giese, Christoph Tiemann and Johannes Kraas

January 1975 in Münsterland: a car leaves the carriageway on an icy road. The driver, a young woman from Borken, is killed instantly. Actually a case for the police from Bocholt, had it not been for the local government reform that transferred responsibility to Borken. Now officers from both towns are reconstructing the course of the accident - and are coming across all kinds of inconsistencies. Why did the woman from Borken have a Bocholt licence plate on her car? Had the vehicle been tampered with? Was the driver involved in drug smuggling from the neighbouring Netherlands? And what do textile industrialists and demonstrators from Bocholt have to do with it? Only together can the case be solved.

To work through this almost true case, audiobook and television presenter Sarah Giese, presenter and author Christoph Tiemann and composer Johannes Kraas drew ideas, role models and inspiration for the plot and characters from real stories that took place in the Münsterland region during the 1975 regional reform. They have peppered these with local colour, real audio footage from interviews with contemporary witnesses and the advantages and disadvantages of the "encirclement", which may even still have an effect today.

The result is an exciting approach to a supposedly dry administrative topic, an examination of the sense and nonsense of regional identity constructions, a questioning of top-down political decisions and a play with the successful, often sensationalist genre "True Crime".

Interview partners: Ulrich Paßlick, Renate Volks-Kuhlmann, Georg Ketteler, Simon Schwerhoff, Britta Kusch-Arnhold, Horst Tiemann, Dr Norbert Fasse, Bernd Schmäing, Gerd Hagedorn, Johannes Hoven, Leo Hessling, Dr Werner Loock, Ludger Nienhaus

Special thanks to Jule Wanders, Till Notzon and Laura Säumenicht.