Ulrich Mühe
Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe was a German film, television and theatre actor. He played the role of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film Das Leben der Anderen, for which he received the gold award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, at the Deutscher Filmpreis ; and the Best Actor Award at the 2006 European Film Awards.
After leaving school, Mühe was employed as a construction worker and a border guard at the Berlin Wall. He then turned to acting, and from the late 1970s into the 1980s appeared in numerous plays, becoming a star of the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin. He was active in politics and denounced Communist rule in East Germany in a memorable address at the Alexanderplatz demonstration on 4 November 1989 shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification he continued to appear in a large number of films, television programmes and theatre productions. In Germany he was particularly known for playing the lead role of Dr. Robert Kolmaar in the long-running forensic crime series Der letzte Zeuge.
Early life and education
The son of a furrier, Mühe was born on 20 June 1953 in Grimma, Bezirk Leipzig, in the German Democratic Republic. After leaving school he trained as a construction worker, then did compulsory military service in the Nationale Volksarmee as a border guard at the Berlin Wall. He was relieved of duty after contracting stomach ulcers; a number of commentators have said that this was due to stress, and also suggested that it marked the beginnings of the stomach cancer that would eventually lead to his death.He then turned to acting, and studied at the Theaterhochschule "Hans Otto" Leipzig from 1975 to 1979. He appeared in his first professional stage role in 1979, as Lyngstrand in Ibsen's Fruen fra havet at the Städtisches Theater in Karl-Marx-Stadt. He followed this by appearing in a production of Macbeth by playwright and director Heiner Müller at the Volksbühne in East Berlin.
Career
In 1983 at Müller's invitation he joined the ensemble of East Berlin's Deutsches Theater, and became its star due to his versatility in comic and serious roles, appearing in productions such as Goethe's Egmont, Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Lessing's Nathan der Weise. He took the lead role of Hamlet in both Shakespeare's play and Heiner Müller's Die Hamletmaschine. Mühe later said: "Theatre was the only place in the GDR where people weren't lied to. For us actors it was an island. We could dare to criticise." On screen, he co-starred with his second wife Jenny Gröllmann in Herman Zschoche's film about the German lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin.Mühe played a leading role in organizing the demonstrations that took place prior to the reunification of Germany. He often gave public readings from Walter Jenka's essay Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit at the Deutsches Theater, before the book was permitted to be published in East Germany. On 4 November 1989 shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in front of half a million people during the Alexanderplatz demonstration, he declared the Communists' monopoly on power to be invalid. In the same year he became internationally known after playing, next to Armin Mueller-Stahl and Klaus Maria Brandauer, the leading role in Bernhard Wicki's Das Spinnennetz the right-wing lieutenant Lohse who sleeps and murders his way to professional success in the early Weimar Republic following a near fatal injury during the Wilhelmshaven mutiny of 29 October 1918.
speaking at the Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989, following a demonstration by half a million citizens
After German reunification he continued to appear in a large number of films, television programmes and theatre productions in Germany and abroad. He proved his ability to take on comic roles in Schtonk!, an Oscar-nominated satire about the Hitler Diaries hoax, and showed his more serious side in Michael Haneke's Benny's Video, Das Schloss and Funny Games. In the latter film, Mühe and his third wife Susanne Lothar played a husband and wife held captive in their holiday cabin by two psychotic young men who force them to play sadistic "games" with one another.
In the 2000s Mühe played a series of Nazis. He portrayed Joseph Goebbels in Goebbels und Geduldig ; Dr. Josef Mengele in Amen., a film by Costa Gavras; and was to have played Klaus Barbie in an upcoming feature. His last film was the comedy Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler, in which he played Prof. Adolf Israel Grünbaum, an actor hired to give Hitler lessons.
In 2006 he appeared at the Barbican Arts Centre in London in Zerbombt, Thomas Ostermeier's German production of Sarah Kane's Blasted, playing a middle-aged journalist whose encounter with a young girl leads to pandemonium in a Leeds hotel room.
Mühe was also well known in Germany for playing the brilliant but eccentric pathologist Dr. Robert Kolmaar in 73 episodes of the forensic crime serial Der letzte Zeuge, for which he was awarded the prize for Beste/r Schauspieler/in in einer Serie at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis in 2005.
''The Lives of Others'', and later life
To English-speaking audiences, Mühe was probably best known for portraying Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Das Leben der Anderen, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007. The film is set in the mid-1980s, and Wiesler is a Stasi agent who is assigned to bug and conduct surveillance of the apartment of an East German playwright, Georg Dreyman, and his girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. However, he becomes disillusioned about the necessity of monitoring the couple for national security reasons after discovering that the government minister who ordered the surveillance did so for sexual rather than political motives. Gradually, Wiesler's heart moves from contempt and envy to compassion. For his performance, in 2006 Mühe received, among other things, the Beste darstellerische Leistung – Männliche Hauptrolle, Gold, at Germany's most prestigious film awards, the Deutscher Filmpreis ; and the Best Actor Award at the European Film Awards.The Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, the government-funded organization tasked with examining and reappraising East Germany's Communist dictatorship, said of Mühe: "Through his impressive performance... Ulrich Mühe sensitized an audience of millions to the Stasi's machinations and their consequences." The statement added that Mühe had been an active and valued participant in the foundation's events.
Mühe was already seriously ill at the prize-giving ceremony in Los Angeles in February 2007 when Das Leben der Anderen was awarded its Oscar, and flew back to Germany hours later for an urgent stomach operation. In an article in Die Welt dated 21 July 2007, Mühe discussed his diagnosis of stomach cancer which had put his acting career on hold; he died the following day. On 25 July 2007 he was buried in his mother's village of Walbeck in the Landkreis of Börde, Saxony-Anhalt.
Personal life
Mühe was married three times. He was first married to dramaturge Annegret Hahn and had two sons by her: Andreas, a Berlin-based photographer, and Konrad, a painter. His second marriage was in 1984 to the actress Jenny Gröllmann, after they fell in love while acting together in the TV film Die Poggenpuhls in that year. Mühe and Gröllmann had a daughter, Anna Maria Mühe, who is also an actress; and he was stepfather to Gröllmann's daughter Jeanne, a make-up artist.at the première of their film Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken
After German reunification, Mühe allegedly discovered evidence in his Stasi file that he had been under surveillance not only by four of his fellow actors in the East Berlin theatre, but also by his wife Gröllmann. The file held detailed records of meetings that Gröllmann, who was registered as an "Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter", had with her controller from 1979 to 1989. This mirrored the plot of Das Leben der Anderen as in the film pressure exerted by the Stasi on the playwright's girlfriend makes her betray him as the author of an exposé of covered-up GDR suicide rates. Mühe and Gröllmann divorced in 1990. In a book accompanying the film, Mühe spoke about the sense of betrayal he felt when he found out about his former wife's alleged Stasi role. However, Gröllmann's real-life controller later claimed he had made up many of the details in the file and that the actress had been unaware that she was speaking to a Stasi agent. After a highly public and acrimonious battle in the courts, Gröllmann, who died in August 2006, won an injunction preventing the book's publication. Mühe's response when asked how he prepared for his role in Das Leben der Anderen was, "I remembered."
At the time of his death, Mühe was married to his third wife, stage actress Susanne Lothar, and living in Berlin with her and their two children, Sophie Marie and Jakob. Mühe and Lothar starred together in Mühe's last film, Nemesis, which deals with a couple's troubled relationship. However, Lothar, who died in 2012, launched a lawsuit to block the film from release for nearly three years, apparently because she felt that it would cast the couple in a bad light.
Awards
In addition to the awards mentioned elsewhere in this article, Mühe was conferred the following awards:- 1990 – The Chaplin Shoe, the Deutscher Darstellerpreis of the Bundesverbandes der Fernseh- und Filmregisseure in Deutschland eV.
- 1991 – The Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring
- 1992 – The Bambi
- 1994 – The Kainz-Medaille
- 2006 – The Bernhard-Wicki-Filmpreis
- The Helene-Weigel-Medaille
- The prize of the critics of the Berliner Zeitung
Filmography
Film
Television
| Year of appearance | Film or series | Role | Awards and nominations |
| 1983 | Der Mann und sein Name | ||
| 1984 | Die Poggenpuhls | Leo | |
| 1986 | Das Buschgespenst | Kaufmann Strauch | |
| 1987 | Die erste Reihe | Rudolf Schwarz | |
| 1988 | Nadine, meine Liebe | Oberleutnant Stein | |
| 1988 | Polizeiruf 110 "Flüssige Waffe" | Kegel | |
| 1989 | Die gläserne Fackel | Maxi Steinhüter | |
| 1990 | Der kleine Herr Friedemann | Johannes Friedemann | |
| 1991 | ' | Julian Green | |
| 1991 | Jugend ohne Gott | Lehrer | |
| 1993 | Extralarge: Diamonds | Father Enrique | |
| 1993 | Das letzte U-Boot | Lt. Cmdr. Gerber | |
| 1993 | ' | Selbstmörder | |
| 1995 | Geschäfte | Sturm | |
| 1995 | ...nächste Woche ist Frieden | ||
| 1995 | Nadja – Heimkehr in die Fremde | Sergej | |
| 1995 | Nikolaikirche | Pfarrer Ohlbaum | |
| 1995 | Rosa Roth "Lügen" | ||
| 1995 | Tödliches Schweigen | Christian Plache | |
| 1996 | Das tödliche Auge | Stefan | |
| 1996 | Tatort "Die Abrechnung" | Peter Fuchs | |
| 1998 | 36 Stunden Angst | Rudolph | |
| 1998 | Siska "Tod einer Würfelspielerin" | ||
| 1998–2007 | Der letzte Zeuge | Dr. Robert Kolmaar |
|
| 1999 | Tatort "Traumhaus" | Friedel Hebbel | |
| 1999 | Todesengel | Dr. Leon Stein | |
| 2001 | Dreimal Leben | Henri | |
| 2003 | Alles Samba | Gerd | |
| 2003 | Hamlet_X | Claudius Müller | |
| 2003 | Günther Gaus | ||
| 2004 | Hunger auf Leben | Jochen Hensel | |
| 2006 | Das Geheimnis von St. Ambrose | Professor Nicolas Cramer | |
| 2006 | Peer Gynt | Der Knopfgiesser |
Some information in this table was obtained from. Retrieved on 23 September 2007.
Theatre
| Year of appearance | Production | Role | Awards and nominations |
| 1979 | Fruen fra havet by Henrik Ibsen Städtisches Theater, Karl-Marx-Stadt | Lyngstrand | |
| ' | Macbeth by William Shakespeare Volksbühne, East Berlin | ||
| 18 November 1983 | Gespenster by Henrik Ibsen Kammerspiele, Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | Osvald Alving | |
| 1986 | Egmont by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | Egmont | |
| ' ?1986–1989 | Hamlet by William Shakespeare Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | Hamlet | |
| ' ?1986–1989 | Nathan der Weise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | ||
| ' ?1986–1989 | Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | Peer Gynt | |
| 1989 | Die Hamletmaschine by Heiner Müller Deutsches Theater, East Berlin | Hamlet | |
| 1990 | Die Jüdin von Toledo by Franz Grillparzer Salzburg Festival, Salzburg, Austria | König Alfons | |
| end-1990s | Dreimal Leben by Yasmina Reza Burgtheater, Vienna, Austria | Henri | |
| 1999 | Gesäubert by Sarah Kane Hamburg | Der Arzt | |
| 2003 | Wittgenstein Incorporated Vienna Festwochen | ||
| 2005 | Zerbombt by Sarah Kane Berlin | Ian | |
| 2006 | Zerbombt by Sarah Kane Barbican Arts Centre, London | Ian | |
| ' | Clavigo by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Clavigo | |
| ' | Philotas by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing | Philotas | |
| Der Traum, ein Leben by Franz Grillparzer | Sigismundis |
Audio books
| Year of appearance | Book | Awards and nominations |
| 1997 | Ein Monat in Dachau by Vladimir Sorokin; translated from the Russian by Peter Urban | |
| 1999 | Ich bin eine Welt: Briefe und Gedichte – eine Collage by Georg Trakl | |
| 2000 | Einen Dichter denken – LAUT by Heiner Müller | |
| 2002 | Adler und Engel by Juli Zeh | |
| 2002 | Die Kinder by Peter Hacks | |
| 2002 | Reise gegen den Wind by Peter Härtling | |
| 2003 | Südkurier by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | |
| 2003 | Wind, Sand und Sterne by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | |
| 2004 | Ein unbekannter Freund by Ivan Bunin | |
| 2004 | "Ich küsse Dich vielmals...": Liebesbriefe | |
| 2005 | Der kleine Prinz by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | |
| 2005 | Weihnachtswünsche: Die Weihnachtsgeschichte nach Lukas und die schönsten Weihnachtsgedichte by Joseph von Eichendorff | |
| 2006 | Shakespeares Hamlet und alles, was ihn für uns zum kulturellen Gedächtnis macht | |
| 2006 | Von allem Anfang an by Christoph Hein | |
| ' | Helden wie wir by Thomas Brussig | |
| ' | Das kalte Herz by Wilhelm Hauff | |
| ' | Der Katze, die immer nur ihre eigenen Wege ging by Horst Hawemann | |
| ' | Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke |