"Tatort" in the check How the farewell of Münster public prosecutor Klemm went
Public prosecutor Wilhelmine Klemm (Mechthild Grossmann) bid farewell to her retirement in "Tatort: Die Erfindung des Rades". Before that, a particularly personal case awaited her.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, left) actually wanted to buy a bicycle, but instead he and Inspector Thiel (Axel Prahl) witnessed the discovery of a corpse.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
The Münster-based bicycle manufacturer Hobrecht & Hobrecht is a fifth-generation family business steeped in tradition. Senior boss Kurt Hobrecht (Hannes Hellmann, right) had only recently handed over the reins to his son Konstantin Hobrecht (Franz Hartwig).
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
To find out who really invented the bicycle, Silke Haller (ChrisTine Urspruch) and Professor Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers) exhume a corpse.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
In their 48th case, Professor Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, left) and Inspector Thiel (Axel Prahl) investigate the history of the bicycle in the cycling city of Münster.
Image: WDR/Molina Film/Frank Dicks
Public prosecutor Wilhelmine Klemm (Mechthild Grossmann) bid farewell to her retirement in "Tatort: Die Erfindung des Rades". Before that, a particularly personal case awaited her.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, left) actually wanted to buy a bicycle, but instead he and Inspector Thiel (Axel Prahl) witnessed the discovery of a corpse.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
The Münster-based bicycle manufacturer Hobrecht & Hobrecht is a fifth-generation family business steeped in tradition. Senior boss Kurt Hobrecht (Hannes Hellmann, right) had only recently handed over the reins to his son Konstantin Hobrecht (Franz Hartwig).
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
To find out who really invented the bicycle, Silke Haller (ChrisTine Urspruch) and Professor Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers) exhume a corpse.
Image: WDR/Frank Dicks
In their 48th case, Professor Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, left) and Inspector Thiel (Axel Prahl) investigate the history of the bicycle in the cycling city of Münster.
Image: WDR/Molina Film/Frank Dicks
An era came to an end on Sunday evening with the Münster "Tatort: Die Erfindung des Rades": Mechthild Grossmann played public prosecutor Wilhelmine Klemm for the last time. The farewell was dignified and personal ...
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- A painful farewell to the Münster "Tatort": after 23 years as public prosecutor Wilhelmine Klemm, Mechthild Grossmann has retired from crime dramas.
- In "The Invention of the Wheel", the brother of a successful entrepreneur was murdered. The bloody deed put Thiel (Axel Prahl) and Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers) on the trail of a family drama.
- The senior boss was not only one of the suspects, but also had a special relationship with prosecutor Klemm.
Bicycles are the most popular means of transportation in Münster: according to the city's tourism website, there are over 400,000 bicycles for every 310,000 inhabitants. So it was only a matter of time before the two cult figures from Münster, forensic scientist Professor Boerne(Jan Josef Liefers) and detective Frank Thiel (Axel Prahl), also dealt with the importance of bicycles for the city in "Tatort".
In "Tatort: Die Erfindung des Rades", directed by Till Franzen, they did this on Sunday evening in a typically wacky way: Professor Boerne has lost his driver's license, so he decides to switch to a bicycle like Thiel. Of course, it couldn't be an ordinary model for the classic car enthusiast.
Instead, he considered purchasing the latest development from the traditional company Hobrecht & Hobrecht: The "First Bike", which had been made according to a recently rediscovered technical drawing from 1882. At the first presentation to invited guests, however, a freezer and a corpse were revealed instead of the bike.
What was it all about?
The dead man was Albert Hobrecht (Heinrich Giskes), the disgraced brother of senior boss Kurt Hobrecht (Hannes Hellmann). Albert had been thrown out of the company by his father in the early 1980s after he had kept his nephew Kurt Hobrecht junior (Simon Steinhorst) in a headlock while playing until he suffered permanent brain damage. Albert never fully forgave his brother for leaving the company.
When the second son of old Kurt Hobrecht, Konstantin Hobrecht (Franz Hartwig), asked his uncle for money to take over the store, Albert sensed an opportunity for late revenge. Albert and Konstantin poured too much booze on their business relationship, as a result of which Albert was run over by his drunken nephew.
What followed was a sequence of absurd events, triggered by all kinds of hurt feelings: Kurt Hobrecht Senior rushed to the aid of his distraught son Konstantin. He forced him to give up his competing e-bike business and take over the management of Hobrecht & Hobrecht.
Kurt Hobrecht Senior stored his brother's body in a freezer in the cellar, where it was desecrated by Kurt Junior and ultimately smuggled into the presentation room by his sister Klara (Karolina Lodyga) instead of the "First Bike".
What was it really about?
Almost more significant than the murder was another storyline in this 48th Münster "Tatort": as was announced in August 2024, actress Mechthild Grossmann, who has played public prosecutor Wilhelmine Klemm since the first Münster "Tatort: Der dunkle Fleck" (2002), will leave the production with this case.
However, her character did not die on Sunday evening, but bid a dignified farewell with a surprisingly personal story. What neither Thiel nor the TV audience knew until now was that the proud single woman Wilhelmine Klemm was almost engaged years ago.
None other than Kurt Hobrecht Senior had proposed to her 50 years ago in Goa: "I thought it was a bit stuffy at the time," confessed Klemm in a one-on-one interview with Thiel: "I didn't want to be anyone's wife. I wanted to be Wilhelmine Klemm."
Kurt, she emphasized, was certainly no saint: "But I know that he would never, ever kill a person." She asked Thiel to investigate the case thoroughly again, because: "I don't want to put the wrong person behind bars in my last case." No sooner said than done. But why did Wilhelmine Klemm decide to retire in the first place? Quite simply: "Because I'm too old for this sh... am."
Was the bicycle really invented in Münster?
Thiel finally managed to convict the real culprit in "Tatort". At the same time, Boerne discovered a historical sensation, which, however, was solely the product of screenwriter Thorsten Wettcke's imagination: the modern bicycle, according to the "Tatort" reality series, was not invented by John Kemp Starley in Coventry, England, in 1884, as is commonly assumed, but by an ancestor of the Hobrechts in Münster two years earlier.
Meanwhile, Wilhelmine Klemm set off on a trip to the Black Forest with her former great love in an old van. "First of all, it was a great pleasure and honor for me that Mrs. Grossmann had chosen me for this task," says screenwriter Thorsten Wettcke in an interview with the broadcaster.
"On the one hand, it was important to us that public prosecutor Klemm herself comes to the point of deciding to quit her job - and is not forced to do so from outside. However, it was even more important to me to get to know Wilhelmine Klemm as a person a little better and to give this wonderful character an ending that was above all emotionally worthy."
What's next for "Tatort" and for Mechthild Grossmann?
Mechthild Grossmann doesn't want to retire completely just yet, as the almost 77-year-old reveals in the interview: she is planning various readings for the coming year and will also be appearing on stage in "Das Vermächtnis" at Schauspielhaus Münster.
According to fellow actor Axel Prahl, a return to "Tatort" is not out of the question either: "She has also offered that she could imagine being a surprise guest again under certain circumstances. I would think that would be great, for example!"
A temporary replacement for Wilhelmine Klemm in "Tatort" has already been found: 33-year-old Lou Strenger is slipping into the role of interim public prosecutor Nikola König. Her first film under the working title "Tatort: Maskerade" is set in the Westphalian carnival and has already been shot.
