Aktenzeichen XY: Germany's Legendary True-Crime Show, Explained

"Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst" (roughly "Case file XY … unsolved") is a German true-crime television show broadcast by public network ZDF since **October 20, 1967**. Each episode reconstructs real unsolved crimes with filmed reenactments, then asks viewers to phone in tips, live, in direct cooperation with the police. Created by Eduard Zimmermann, it is the original template that later inspired the BBC's "Crimewatch" and "America's Most Wanted" in the US.

**Rudi Cerne** has hosted the show since January 2002. A former competitive figure skater turned sports journalist, Cerne walks viewers through the reenactments, interviews the investigating detectives in the studio and reports incoming tips live during the broadcast. He is only the show's defining face after founder Eduard Zimmermann, who fronted it for its first three decades.

The 629th episode, aired July 29, 2026, featured a jewelry store robbery by two men (one with a distinctive identifying feature), a home invasion in which two masked men appeared in a sleeping man's doorway, the unsolved 1997 murder of 78-year-old millionaire widow Lieselotte Hohlmann in Essen, and the disappearance of five-year-old Inga Gehricke, missing since a 2015 family outing near Stendal. The Inga case drew the most viewer tips of the night, according to ZDF. Sources: ZDF, Ruhr Nachrichten.

Yes, and that is the show's whole point. ZDF puts the clear-up rate of cases featured on the program at around **40 percent**, a remarkable figure given that these are, by definition, investigations the police could not crack alone. The mechanism has worked for almost 60 years: a mass audience plus a detailed reconstruction produces witnesses and tips that would never otherwise surface. Source: ZDF.

Roughly **once a month, on a Wednesday at 8:15 pm** on ZDF, one of German television's most protected time slots. The main show is complemented by spin-off specials such as "Aktenzeichen XY … gelöst" (revisiting solved cases) and cold-case editions. Exact dates are published in ZDF's schedule ahead of each broadcast.

On the **ZDFmediathek**, ZDF's free streaming platform, where episodes are available after broadcast, including the July 29, 2026 edition. No subscription is required. The show is geo-targeted at German-speaking audiences, so availability outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland can vary.

Inga Gehricke is a German girl who disappeared on May 2, 2015, at age five, during a family outing at Wilhelmshof near Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt. Her case, sometimes called Germany's most haunting missing-child mystery, has never been solved despite extensive searches. The July 29, 2026 episode revisited it with a combined reward of 25,000 euros for decisive information, and it generated more viewer tips than any other case that night. Sources: ZDF, zdfheute.

Because a new episode, the show's 629th, aired on Wednesday evening, July 29, 2026. Every broadcast reliably sends the show to the top of German search trends: viewers look up details of the featured cases, and people who missed it search for summaries and the stream. The July 2026 edition had extra resonance because it revisited two of Germany's best-known unsolved cases.

The **XY-Preis** is an annual award the show gives to ordinary citizens who showed civil courage, helping solve a crime or protect others. In the July 29, 2026 episode, Stephanie Schreiner from Bavaria was presented as a 2026 candidate: her sustained observations of a neighbor's suspicious behavior, reported to the authorities, led to his conviction for serious child sexual abuse. Source: ZDF.

Yes. The format Eduard Zimmermann created in 1967 is widely credited as the blueprint for viewer-assisted crime television worldwide, most famously the BBC's "Crimewatch" (launched 1984) and "America's Most Wanted" (launched 1988) in the United States. The core idea, reconstruct an unsolved case on television and let the audience act as a million extra witnesses, originated with the German show.