---
name: "Jonas Nay"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/jonas-nay"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "20 September 1990"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T20:13:25.088763+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Jonas Nay

Actor. Born 20 September 1990 in Lübeck, Germany.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 20 September 1990, Lübeck, Germany
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Nay, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1272670, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1909076/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/585492

## Fi1m on Jonas Nay

> Nay plays young men who are out of their depth and do not know it, and he lets us watch them find out. In *Deutschland* that made a Stasi agent worth rooting for, which is not a small thing.

Martin Rauch, an East German agent sent West, stands in the aisle of a supermarket in *Deutschland* (2015) and looks at the shelves. Jonas Nay does almost nothing with the moment. He does not gape, he does not reach for anything, and the scene is not played for a laugh. We were moved by it more than we expected to be by a scene about groceries, because his face lets you watch a young man realise that what he was told about this place was not true, and decide to keep that to himself. That is what Nay does. He plays people who are a step behind the plot and shows you the second they catch up.

He came to acting sideways. A newspaper casting call in 2004 led to a child part in the NDR series *Vier gegen Z* (2005–06), and he never went to drama school; his training was in film-music composition and jazz piano, and he still composes and plays in bands. "Making music has always been my passion, my acting career began later and by coincidence," he has said, and there is something of it in how he acts: he knows when to hold still. The lead in the television film *Homevideo* (2011), as a bullied teenager, was his breakthrough. *König von Deutschland* (2013) took him into cinemas, and *We Are Young. We Are Strong.* (2014) put him among the leads of a film about the 1992 Rostock-Lichtenhagen attacks. Then came Martin.

*Deutschland 83* and its sequels *Deutschland 86* (2018) and *Deutschland 89* (2020), all from creators Anna and Jörg Winger, remain the best case for him. Martin is not a natural spy and not a fool, and Nay resists both, giving us a decent, obedient young man who is startled to find he has a talent for lying. Opposite Maria Schrader's Lenora, dry and quite without shame about using her own family, he is the one who still blushes, and their scenes carry more charge than the plots around them. By the end of the first season we were hoping a Stasi agent would get away with it and were not comfortable about that, which is the show's point and largely his doing. The later seasons travel further and land less often, but he is never the reason they falter.

Since then the parts have been heavier: Max in *Persian Lessons* (2020), an SS officer in *The Tattooist of Auschwitz* (2024), with *Transatlantic* (2023) and *Bookish* (2025) between them. We have not reviewed them and will not judge them here. What we can say is that his casting runs in a narrow lane, young men caught in the gears of German history, from the bullied boy to the spy to the man in the uniform, and the lane suits him almost too well. Nobody has yet asked him to play someone with nothing at stake. We would like to see it, if only to find out whether the stillness is his or the century's.

## Biography

Jonas Nay is a German actor and musician. Born on 20 September 1990 in Lübeck, he began acting as a child, appearing in the NDR series *4 gegen Z* (2005–2006) under the name Jonas Friedebom. He gained early recognition for his lead role in the 2011 television film *Homevideo*, for which he received a German Television Award and a Grimme Prize.

Nay achieved wider international recognition starring as Martin Rauch (also known as Moritz Stamm and Frank Jonas) in the series *Deutschland 83* (2015) and its sequels *Deutschland 86* (2018) and *Deutschland 89* (2020). Other notable film roles include Stefan in *We Are Young. We Are Strong.* (2014), Max in *Persian Lessons* (2020), and Stefan Baretzki in *The Tattooist of Auschwitz* (2024). He has also appeared in series such as *Transatlantic* (2023) and *Bookish* (2025). Nay is a member of the band Pudeldame.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, filmportal.de, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Deutschland* (2015), Fi1m 74, as Martin Rauch / Moritz Stamm / Frank Jonas — [page](https://film.one/tv/deutschland.md)

## Complete filmography (40)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Final Hours* (2026), series, as Jan Morava
- *Three Lives Long* (2025), as King
- *My Lady in Blue* (2025), as Denis Reuter
- *Bookish* (2025), series, as Felix
- *Messiah Superstar* (2025), series, as Leon Pohl
- *The Tattooist of Auschwitz* (2024), series, as Stefan Baretzki
- *Weihnachtspäckchen ... haben alle zu tragen* (2023), Music
- *Transatlantic* (2023), series, as Walter Mehring
- *INTIMATE.* (2023), series, as Jonas Nay, Jonas
- *A Thousand Lines* (2022), as Lars Bogenius
- *Little America* (2021), series, as Siegfried Strumm
- *The Four of Us* (2021), as Nils, Original Music Composer
- *Persian Lessons* (2020), as Max
- *The Accidental Rebel* (2019), as Max
- *Der Club der singenden Metzger* (2019), series, Acting
- *The Master Butcher* (2019), as Fidelis Waldvogel, Music
- *Comrades and Cash - Geheime Geschafte unter dem Eisernen Vorhang* (2018), as Narrator
- *Regrettably Kin* (2017), as Lenny Lühr
- *A Minute’s Silence* (2016), as Christian Voigt
- *Jennifer – Sehnsucht nach was Besseres* (2015), series, Acting
- *Summer Solstice* (2015), as Guido
- *Deutschland* (2015), series, as Martin Rauch / Moritz Stamm / Frank Jonas — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/tv/deutschland.md)
- *Line of Separation* (2015), series, as Friedrich Erler
- *We Are Young. We Are Strong.* (2014), as Stefan
- *Hirngespinster* (2014), as Simon Dallinger
- *Dear Courtney* (2014), as Paul Thomas
- *Nichts mehr wie vorher* (2013), as Daniel Gudermann
- *King Ordinary* (2013), as Alexander Müller
- *Death on the Baltic* (2013), as Jan Kossack
- *Die Frau von früher* (2013), as Alex
- *Sechzehneichen* (2012), as Tim
- *Letzte Spur Berlin* (2012), series, as Felix Knuppke
- *Jorinde und Joringel* (2011), as Joringel
- *Homevideo* (2011), as Jakob Moormann
- *Der Kriminalist* (2006), series, as Heiner Diebold
- *4 Against Z* (2005), series, as Otti Sörensen
- *KRIMI.DE* (2005), series, as Niko
- *The Peppercorns* (1999), series, as Tim
- *Scene of the Crime* (1970), series, as Tobias Rahn, Kilian
- *Partynation*, as King

## Gallery

- ![Jonas Nay](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-7f87b9348d70.jpg) Jonas Nay — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Jonas_Nay_%284%29_crop.jpg/1280px-Jonas_Nay_%284%29_crop.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-a2fa41bb8040.jpg) Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012 — Martina Nolte, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0133.jpg/1280px-2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0133.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-c1392e8631f1.jpg) Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012 — Martina Nolte, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0134.JPG/1280px-2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0134.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-a56c134568b6.jpg) Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012 — Martina Nolte, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0135.jpg/1280px-2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0135.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Jonas Nay](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-c27bfba2289a.jpg) Jonas Nay — Image via TMDB
- ![Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-3dc505bff707.jpg) Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012 — Martina Nolte, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0136.jpg/1280px-2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0136.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012](https://film.one/media/person/979876/gallery-029a87f10d52.jpg) Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis 2012 — Martina Nolte, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0137.jpg/1280px-2012-05-31_Studio_Hamburg_Nachwuchspreis_DSCF0137.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Other awards — 2 won

- Bavarian TV Awards 2020: Bavarian TV Awards (won), for *The Master Butcher*
- Baden-Baden Festival of TV Films 2011: Baden-Baden Festival of TV Films (won), for *Homevideo*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jonas-nay