Drug and Terrorism Investigations Are Discontinued

The discontinuation of the drug and terrorism investigations closes the state’s attempt to treat the Auerhaus household as a single suspect collective. The proceedings do not produce a uniform acquittal: most cases are eventually dropped, while the residents’ earlier acts are divided into separate legal accusations and Harry receives a warning over cannabis. The contrast between the broad suspicion surrounding the house and the individualized results makes the investigation’s ending a legal resolution, but not an erasure of what happened.

Search and Legal Classification

Plainclothes officers and a prosecutor arrive at Auerhaus with official papers, replacing the earlier spectacle of masked investigators with the formal language of warrants and statutes. When the prosecutor names the Narcotics Act, the residents understand that drugs are part of the inquiry. The search then turns to Frieder’s conscription file: the prosecutor identifies theft and suppression of documents, and the marked-up papers add accusations of denigrating state symbols, forgery, and property damage. Frieder had drawn through the eagles printed on the documents and added small campfires beneath them. An act of mockery inside the shared house is thus translated into a list of offenses by the authorities.

The prosecutor also studies the household’s poster labeled “Terrorists.” Its portraits had become a domestic joke: residents who failed to wash the dishes were added, and photographs of disliked public figures who had died were crossed out. The poster helps explain why the investigation reaches beyond drugs and theft into suspicions of political offenses. The inquiry makes the house’s private jokes legible to police as potential evidence, even though the poster itself does not establish that the residents planned an attack.

From Investigation to Disposition

Cäcilia’s father comes to collect her after the search, saying nothing and not looking at the others. Frieder, Vera, Pauline, and the narrator walk home together. The separation is immediate and visible, even before the legal outcomes are known: Cäcilia leaves in her father’s car, while the others remain together under suspicion.

At trial, Cäcilia’s parents’ lawyer argues that she had fallen under the bad influence of the others and emphasizes that her photograph was not on the terrorist poster. Her case is dismissed on every point. The narrator turns the absence of her photograph into a bitter joke, calling the result an acquittal by dishwashing: the household’s improvised system for punishing whoever neglected the chores has unexpectedly become relevant to a defense argument.

Vera, Pauline, and the narrator are each sentenced to forty hours of community service for theft and insulting the memory of the dead. Frieder receives fifty hours, with the wooden pistol also included in his case. Harry’s outcome is different again: he receives a suspended one-year sentence for drug dealing and possession, along with a two-year driving ban because of the police chase. The ending therefore distinguishes among the residents rather than confirming a single collective verdict.

Closure and Its Limits

Cäcilia’s lawyer later secures the discontinuation of all remaining proceedings, with Harry singled out for a warning over the cannabis found in his room. The narrator also learns that his Bundeswehr file remains among the investigative records and is likely to stay there. The inquiries may be formally closed, but the file’s continued presence shows how an investigation can leave a bureaucratic trace after its active consequences have ended.

The episode’s resolution is deliberately uneven. Cäcilia is cleared, several residents have already received community-service sentences, Frieder has a longer sentence connected in part to the wooden pistol, and Harry’s drug-related punishment remains distinct. The legal process breaks the household’s shared life into separate cases and outcomes; it does not settle the emotional and personal crises unfolding within it, nor does it turn the authorities’ suspicions into proof of a terrorist plan.