Ernst Jacobi

Ernst Jacobi (born Ernst Gerhard Ludwig Jacobi‑Scherbening on 1933‑07‑11 in Berlin, Germany) was a prolific German actor whose career spanned six decades, encompassing stage, film, television and voice work. His early childhood was marked by upheaval: his parents divorced shortly after his birth, his mother moved to Norway in 1939 while he was placed with his father’s sister in a strict Protestant pastor’s household, and he only reunited with his mother and step‑sister after World War II. At age fifteen he joined the children’s choir of RIAS, and after completing his Abitur in 1951 he trained at the Max‑Reinhardt‑Schule in Berlin until 1953, later honing his craft with Jacques Lecoq in Paris and London during the 1960s. Jacobi began his theatrical career at the Hebbel‑Theater in Berlin and subsequently performed at major venues such as the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Burgtheater in Vienna (1977‑1987) and the Schauspielhaus Zürich (1987‑1992), earning a reputation for serious character roles and a meticulous stage presence. In cinema he gained international recognition for his role as the Nazi Gauleiter Löbsack in Volker Schlöndorff’s Palme d’Or‑winning The Tin Drum (1979) and for portraying Hans in Helma Sanders‑Brahms’s Germany, Pale Mother (1980), a performance that highlighted the psychological toll of fascism on ordinary men. Later, he embodied Adolf Hitler in the Scandinavian biopic Hamsun (1996) and lent his resonant voice as the narrator of Michael Haneke’s award‑winning The White Ribbon (2009). On television he appeared in more than two hundred productions, including iconic series such as Derrick and Tatort, and his final on‑screen appearance was in the crime series Polizeiruf 110 in 2017. As a voice actor, Jacobi dubbed iconic characters for German audiences, most famously providing the German voice of Peter Pan (1953) and later Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in the Back to the Future trilogy. His distinctive vocal timbre also brought numerous audiobooks to life. Jacobi was awarded the Berliner Kunstpreis in 1975 for his portrayal of Alexander März in the TV film Das Leben des schizophrenen Dichters Alexander März, underscoring his artistic versatility. He spent his later years living quietly in Munich before passing away in Vienna on 2022‑06‑23 at the age of 88, leaving behind a legacy of over two hundred screen roles and a body of work that continues to be studied for its depth and historical significance.