Silke Bodenbender

In the late 1960s, Alexander falls head over heels for the confident, free-spirited Ellen. When, after a beautiful night of love, she finds out that Alexander's father, Frans Münninghoff, was an SS man during the war, she disappears from his life… only to reappear a good month later. She is pregnant. But in order to build a future together, he will first have to confront his repressed and eventful family past. After a lonely and unhappy childhood in an atmosphere of whitewashing and lies, he actually knows very little about his family, dominated by his powerful, very wealthy grandfather. What follows is a search for the truth about his strange, dysfunctional family with not only shocking discoveries but also heartwarming encounters. The intense odyssey also brings Ellen and Alexander closer together, but will they manage to finally leave the old family demons behind?

Within a few weeks, two murdered lovers were found in the Göhrde state forest in Lower Saxony in the summer of 1989. The popular local recreation area was quickly given the name "Totenwald" in public. When another woman later disappears, in contrast to the previous murders, the police quickly have a suspect on hand: the husband of the disappeared. His brother-in-law, a high-ranking criminal investigator, does not believe in his guilt. The investigation is said to drag on for decades and only after his retirement does he come across revealing inconsistencies in the investigation in the early 1990s. Could this reveal the entire secret of the "forest of the dead"?