Eine Sache der Auslegung
What actually happened on the night in question? The accused is charged with deliberately abandoning his badly wounded neighbour to bleed out in his apartment on New Year’s Eve. The neighbour had apparently walked into a glass door in the courtyard, smashing it into thousands of pieces, some of which became lodged in the victim’s legs. It seems that the accused helped him back to his apartment and attempted to stem the bleeding with some towels. But then he left the apartment and closed the door. At least that is what the witness claims, the woman who lives next door and who reported him for involuntary manslaughter. But maybe she didn’t see the door shut? Maybe she didn’t even hear it because loud pop music was coming from inside the victim’s apartment? What did the accused actually do? And why is this court treating him like a violent criminal even though nothing has been proved? What strange laws are the court staff and the various witnesses in this trial following? Has the legal system somehow — been reversed? The lawyer and writer Olga Bach has written an unsettling courtroom drama in which the near future slides into a Kafkaesque abyss and the question of guilt is no longer a legal one, but “eine Sache der Auslegung” — a matter of interpretation.