The police confrontation at the traffic lights is the night when the Auerhaus residents’ playacting with a wooden pistol nearly becomes a fatal encounter with armed officers. After the car is stopped and the gun is pointed toward a police vehicle, officers pursue the group and fire real shots. The apparent prank ends in temporary arrests and, later, legal consequences that differ from one resident to another; the incident makes the distance between a joke and its official interpretation suddenly dangerous.

Causes and Setup

The confrontation grows out of a reckless moment in Gluckgluck, the American car driven by Harry. Frieder rummages in the enormous glove compartment and comes out holding a pistol. He taps its handle and asks whether it is wood; Harry challenges him to find out. The exchange gives the weapon the air of a prop in a game, but its appearance is convincing enough to be mistaken for the real thing.

The car reaches a traffic light beside a police vehicle. The later account places the encounter around 11:30 p.m. at the signal near the Binder optician’s shop in Ensingen. The officers are returning to the station from an assignment whose reason the newspaper account does not explain. Their presence is therefore incidental to the residents’ evening, but the weapon turns that chance meeting into a confrontation. The narrator’s mother later recognizes that Gluckgluck is an American car, a detail that connects the group’s supposedly private escapade to the public account of the incident.

The Threat and Pursuit

At the light, a weapon is pointed from the open passenger window toward the police car. The driver of the police vehicle turns and sees it; from the officers’ perspective, the threat is immediate. When the signal changes from red to yellow, Harry accelerates straight ahead, against the traffic rules, toward Gebingen. The car reaches speeds of seventy and then eighty kilometers per hour.

Inside Gluckgluck, the group’s reactions expose the collapse of the game. Pauline urges Harry to shoot. Frieder turns around and shouts for everyone to duck, then aims through the rear window and imitates gunfire with cries of “Peng! Pengpengpeng!” Vera grips the narrator’s hand hard enough to dig her fingernails into it. They are the only two in the car whose wits remain about them. Then come two actual shots. The distinction between Frieder’s childish imitation and the officers’ gunfire is audible, not theoretical: the pursuit has brought the group into the reach of real weapons.

The police follow and fire warning shots. At the next traffic light, near Uhlandstraße, the fleeing car stops at a red signal and the police vehicle pulls across its path. Three men and two women, all eighteen, are temporarily detained. The residents stand around Gluckgluck with their hands on its roof as the scene fills with blue lights and police officers. The group had been responsible for creating the danger, but the stop leaves them at the mercy of an armed, official response.

Aftermath and Secrecy

The confrontation had nearly ended in catastrophe, and the narrator recalls that they could all have died—Frieder in particular. They decide not to discuss what happened with anyone. The silence is a form of concealment, driven by shame at their recklessness and by the fear they had felt. That night, everyone except Cäcilia sleeps together in Frieder’s room: they carry the mattresses in and lay them side by side on the floor. The shared sleeping arrangement gives the group a brief, concrete image of closeness after the danger, while Cäcilia remains at her parents’ home rather than the Auerhaus.

The incident does not remain private. The narrator’s mother reads the newspaper account aloud, including its claim that the officers’ presence of mind prevented injuries and its description of a weapon used to threaten them. She asks whether the group was involved; the narrator denies it. The report calls the object a realistic-looking imitation discovered during the search and says that proceedings were opened against the driver and passenger for traffic violations, carrying an imitation firearm, and gross mischief. Its accompanying photograph shows the Binder optician’s shop and the traffic light at the town’s exit. The mother’s question punctures the group’s attempted secrecy: the episode has already become a public story, even as the narrator continues to deny it.

Investigation and Legal Consequences

The confrontation sits within a broader police investigation of life at Auerhaus. During a search, officers in plain clothes arrive with a prosecutor, who shows the residents a stamped document. Vera reads the reference to the Betäubungsmittelgesetz, and Pauline explains that it concerns drugs. In another discovery, an officer opens the freezer and retrieves the conscription file Frieder had hidden there. The file bears Frieder’s drawn-through federal eagles and small campfires beneath them. The prosecutor identifies alleged offenses including theft, suppression and forgery of documents, disparagement of the state and its symbols, and property damage. The search and the imitation pistol turn the household’s provocations into a set of formal accusations.

The trial produces unequal outcomes rather than a single judgment on the household. Cäcilia’s case is dismissed on all counts. The narrator, Vera, and Pauline are convicted of theft and disparaging the memory of the dead, and each receives forty hours of community service. Frieder receives fifty hours, with the wooden pistol added to the matters against him. Harry receives a one-year suspended prison sentence for drug dealing and possession, as well as a two-year driving ban arising from the pursuit. The episode’s consequences therefore extend beyond the moment at the light: the same shared life is divided into distinct legal cases, and the false weapon remains a real part of Frieder’s sentence.

Narrative Significance

The event turns on a reversal of scale. At first, the pistol belongs to the group’s irreverent world of dares and performance; after it is aimed at officers, the same object is treated as a credible threat. Frieder’s shouted imitation of gunfire makes the change especially stark: his “Peng” is followed by shots that are not pretend. The residents’ joke cannot control how it is received by the people on the other side of the window, or what follows once the police act on that perception.

The later newspaper reading places the reader between the group’s memory and the official account. The report presents a near-disaster prevented by police composure; the narrator’s remembered scene supplies the reckless provocations, the fear inside the car, and the decision to keep silent. Neither account erases the other. The confrontation is both an adolescent episode the residents would rather conceal and an event with formal consequences—temporary detention, investigation, and punishment. The traffic light, where the car is first stopped beside the police and later blocked at another red signal, marks the point where performance gives way to consequence.