Spectacular murder in the Schleswig State Museum at Gottorf Castle: the young and attractive museum guard Dörte Klein is found murdered within the historic walls. Inspector Jana Winter (Natalia Wörner) and her colleagues take up the investigation.
What is explosive is that the museum employee obviously had plans to emigrate – and with a large sum of money that she couldn’t possibly have saved with her small salary.
Fine welts on the neck indicate that a necklace was snatched from the dead woman. Nevertheless, robbery is quickly ruled out as the sole motive, because money was not stolen.
Soon the mentally handicapped Christoph Kramer (Peter Jordan) comes under suspicion, who works in the castle nursery and has been cared for by his sister Rike (Maria Simon) since the death of their parents. Jana, however, does not trust the man with such a violent crime. Matthias Hamm (Ralph Herforth) therefore accuses his colleague of “falling into the pity trap”.
Footage from a surveillance camera points to museum director Reimers (Daniel Friedrich) as a possible perpetrator. Did Reimers have an affair with the victim? The suspicions against the director are confirmed and he is arrested. In custody, Reimers tries to take his own life and is subsequently in mortal danger.
In the course of the investigation, the evidence against Christoph Kramer is increasingly corroborated. Jana comes under massive pressure – was she wrong all along and let a murderer run free?
In addition to Natalia Wörner as Inspector Jana Winter, the ninth case in the successful ZDF crime series once again features the proven team of Martin Brambach as Arne Brauer, Max von Pufendorf as Ole Jessen and Ralph Herforth as Hamm. Other roles are played by Thomas Sarbacher, Daniel Friedrich, Tanja Schleiff, Daniel Friedrich, Catrin Striebeck and others.
The screenplay was written by Stefan Kolditz (German Television Award for “Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter,” German Screenplay Award for “Es war einmal,” Adolf Grimme Award for “An die Grenze”), and directed again by Judith Kennel. “Unter anderen Umständen” is produced by Network Movie Hamburg, Jutta Lieck-Klenke and Dietrich Kluge. Daniel Blum is the editor at ZDF.