Ulrich Mühe

Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe, known professionally as Ulrich Mühe, was a renowned German actor and theatre director whose career spanned from the late 1970s until his untimely death in 2007. Born on 20 June 1953 in Grimma, East Germany, he grew up as the son of a furrier and initially worked as a construction worker and a border guard at the Berlin Wall before turning to the stage, studying at the Theaterhochschule "Hans Otto" Leipzig from 1975 to 1979. His breakthrough came when he joined the prestigious Deutsches Theater in East Berlin in 1983, where he distinguished himself in roles ranging from Hamlet to Heiner Müller’s avant‑garde productions, earning a reputation as a versatile performer who could inhabit both comic and tragic characters.\n\nMühe’s film and television work exploded after German reunification, most notably as Dr. Robert Kolmaar in the long‑running crime series Der letzte Zeuge (1998‑2007) and as the Stasi officer Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar‑winning Das Leben der Anderen (2006), a performance that brought him the Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Actor and the European Film Award. Beyond his screen successes, he remained a politically engaged artist, famously denouncing the GDR regime during the Alexanderplatz demonstration on 4 November 1989. His personal life was marked by three marriages—to dramaturge Annegret Hahn, actress Jenny Gröllmann, and finally actress Susanne Lothar—with five children, including actress Anna Maria Mühe. Despite a diagnosis of stomach cancer, he continued to work until his death on 22 July 2007, leaving a legacy of powerful, conscience‑driven performances that continue to inspire German cinema and theatre.