Watch Me Die . In Der Zweikampf , a powerful feudal lord commits murder and then manages to falsely incriminate a virtuous virgin. As a result of his accusations, she is cast out by her narrow-minded father and brothers, who are easily convinced by the cunning false evidence that the lord has planted. Luckily, though, the woman finds a sympathetic knight who accepts her on faith and champions her cause. The case is settled not in a court of law, but in a medieval ritual of single combat to the death, a Zweikampf , between the lord and the knight.
Further complications arise when the outcome of the combat is cast in doubt.
Both the lord and the knight are injured in the battle, but neither dies immediately. Since the knight's injury appears at first glance to be the more serious, people initially assume that the lord is innocent and the woman guilty. When it turns out later though that the apparently trivial wound suffered by the lord does not heal up and is in fact quite fatal, the falsely accused woman and her defender are exonerated. The most gripping point in Der Zweikampf comes right after the battle is fought, when the knight seems about to die and the woman seems to be doomed. She actually begins to doubt her own innocence, since the outcome of the battle seems like a divine revelation of her guilt outweighing the evidence of her own senses that tell her she didn't commit the crime.