Tannöd

"The devil took them!" - that's what the village says when the entire Danner family is found dead on a remote farm in Tannöd. Six people were killed in a single night. Fear spreads through the community.

No clues, no known motive. Was it divine punishment, a premeditated robbery gone murderous, or perhaps long-overdue revenge for old wrongs? Tannöd must have been a place of dread even before the killings. Old Danner reportedly ruled the family like a brutal patriarch - there are whispers of incest and violence. An open secret in the village, yet it takes a cold-blooded murder to make people talk. Bit by bit, those involved piece together the events in flashbacks and interior monologues.

An unsolved murder case from 1922 inspired Andrea Maria Schenkel's novel "Tannöd". She set the story in the postwar years, crafting not just a crime thriller but a precise portrait of an era when certain things were buried in silence.