Sylvester Groth

Sylvester Groth
Groth in 2009
Born	(1958-03-31) 31 March 1958 (age 66) Jerichow, Bezirk Magdeburg, East Germany
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1980–present

Sylvester Groth (born 31 March 1958) is a German theater, television, and film actor. He is best known to international audiences from his appearances in Hollywood movies including Inglourious Basterds and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Furthermore, he has appeared in the Netflix series Sense8, Fargo, and Dark.

Biography

Groth is the youngest of five siblings from Jerichow (Bezirk Magdeburg) in the former German Democratic Republic, where he also spent his childhood. His family is from Upper Silesia. Groth's father died while he was still young, and his mother married a second time. When he was 14 years old, the family moved to Leipzig. In 1986, he escaped from East Germany to West Germany.

He studied acting and singing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. This was followed by engagements in Schwerin, Dresden, and Berlin, where he worked as a guest actor at the Deutsches Theater and from 1986 to 1989 at the Schaubühne. He also worked at the Residenz Theater, the Munich Kammerspiele, the Berliner Ensemble, the Burgtheater in Vienna, and the Salzburg Festival.^[1]

In addition to an extensive theater career, Groth has also acted in numerous television productions and feature films. His first major film role was in 1983 in the East German film The Turning Point, based on a novel by Hermann Kant. In 1986, he appeared in Johannes Schaaf's adaptation of Michael Ende's story Momo. In 1992, he acted in the war drama Stalingrad and in 2006 he took on the role of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels in Dani Levy's My Führer – The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler.

Groth is known to English-language audiences for appearing in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds, in which he again portrayed Goebbels.^[2] More recently, he held a leading role in the Netflix series Dark as Clausen, a police investigator, as well as appearing in the first episode of the third season of Fargo.

In January 2013, the Film Museum in Potsdam honoured Groth with a retrospective.^[3] On 1 December 2017, he received an award from the DEFA Foundation for his outstanding achievements in German film.

Selected filmography

For a more comprehensive list, see de:Sylvester Groth.

Film

List of film appearances, with year, title, and role shown

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	The Turning Point	Mark Niebuhr
1986	The House on the River	Heinz Hüsgen
1986	Momo	Agent BLW/553 X
1992	The Last U-Boat	Funker Maschke
1993	Stalingrad	Otto
2003	The Third Wave	Dauphin
2006	Nevermore	Pfarrer Ekdahl
2007	My Führer – The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler	Joseph Goebbels
2008	The Reader	Prosecutor
	Buddenbrooks	Kesselmayer
2009	Hilde	Boleslaw Barlog
	Inglourious Basterds	Joseph Goebbels
2010	Aghet – Ein Völkermord	Martin Niepage	Documentary
2015	Naked Among Wolves	Helmut Krämer
	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	Uncle Rudi
2017	In Times of Fading Light	Kurt Umnitzer
2019	Berlin, I Love You	Frosch
2022	The 355	Jonas Muller

Television

List of television appearances, with year, title, and role shown

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1990	Rote Erde	Fritz Rewandowski
2003	Tatort: Stiller Tod	Justus Fürmann, public prosecutor
2004	Mein Leben & Ich		4 episodes
2005	Tatort: Rache-Engel	Chief of police
2007	Rosa Roth	Michael Katzmann
2007, 2013	Der Kriminalist		2 episodes
2010	KDD – Kriminaldauerdienst	Richard Plötz	1 episode
2011	Tatort: Das Dorf	Medical examiner
2012, 2014	The Old Fox		2 episodes
2012	Tatort: Die schöne Mona ist tot	Christian Seitz
2010	Generation War	Sturmbannführer/Standartenführer Hiemer	2 episodes
	Tatort: Schwarzer Afghane	Norbert Müller
	Tatort: Wer das Schweigen bricht	Rainer Vaske
2013–2015	Polizeiruf 110	Jochen Drexler	4 parts
2015	Sense8	Sergei Bogdanow	4 episodes
	Deutschland 83	Walter Schweppenstette	8 episodes
2016	NSU German History X: The Investigators [de]	Walter Ahler
2017	Tatort: Wacht am Rhein	Dieter Gottschalk
	Fargo	Colonel Horst Lagerfeld	1 episode
2018	Deutschland 86	Walter Schweppenstette	10 episodes
2019	Dark	Clausen
	Criminal: Germany	Detective Chief Inspector Karl Schultz	3 episodes
2020	Deutschland 89	Walter Schweppenstette	8 episodes

Awards and honours

• Heinrich Greif Prize for The Turning Point (1984)
• Television and film award from the German Academy of Performing Arts for Romeo (2001)
• Grimme-Preis for Romeo (2002)
• Deutscher Kritikerpreis for the portrayal of Joseph Goebbels in My Führer – The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler (2007)
• DEFA Foundation Prize for outstanding achievements in German film (2017)

References

1. "Wer ist Sylvester Groth?" [Who is Sylvester Groth?]. bild.de (in German). 18 March 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
2. Inglourious Basterds credits
3. "Filmmuseum Potsdam: Ausstellungen: Retrospektive Sylvester Groth" [Filmmuseum Potsdam: Exhibitions: Retrospective Sylvester Groth]. filmmuseum-potsdam.de (in German). 8 January 2014. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2020.

External links

• Sylvester Groth at IMDb