Ulrich Müehe 1953-2007

Shane Danielsen

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Ulrich Müehe in The Lives of Others, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year.

Early this morning, Berlin awoke to the sad news that Ulrich Müehe, the actor who played Gerd Wiesler, the conscience-stricken Stasi officer in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, has died.

Only yesterday, in an interview in the Bild-Zeitung newspaper, the 54-year-old actor had confessed to suffering from stomach cancer; he had already been ill, he said, when he'd attended the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles in March. But he had since undergone an operation, and claimed to be feeling much better - though he also admitted, later in the piece, that subsequently the cancer had returned.

In fact, when the interview ran, Muehe had already been dead for two days, having passed away late Sunday night in the town of Walbeck, surrounded by his family.

In his homeland, he's best known for Der Letzte Zeuge (The Last Witness), a TV show screened on ZDF about a pathologist that's widely regarded as Germany's best crime series. For nine seasons, as the fastidious, melancholy Dr Robert Kolmaar, he displayed the same qualities of watchfulness and intelligence he bought to his role in The Lives of Others - arguably the finest screen performance of 2006, and the part which broke him internationally, earning him seven prizes for Best Actor, including a European Film Award. Some international viewers may, however, also recall his wrenching performance in Michael Haneke's Funny Games.

After completing his military service, and a brief stint as a construction worker, the young Muehe studied theatre at the at the Leipziger Theaterhochschule, where he quickly earned a reputation as one of the finest actors of his generation. At that time, he said, "The theatre was the only place in the GDR where the people were not deceived. For us, as actors, it was an island. Where we could speak out and be heard."

In a strange coincidence, his first wife, the actress Jenny Groellmann, also died of cancer just a few months after The Lives of Others was released - and she, Muehe claimed, had herself been an agent of the Stasi from 1979 to 1989, spying on him and their fellow actors, a charge Groellmann strenuously denied. A month before her death, she won an injunction to prevent him from publishing a book on the matter.

His own life, he said, had been akin to the film - only with him as the victim, not the all-seeing aggressor. Now, sadly, he is gone.