---
name: "Volker Bruch"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/volker-bruch"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "9 March 1980"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T20:05:22.629410+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."
---

# Volker Bruch

Actor. Born 9 March 1980 in Munich, Germany.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 9 March 1980, Munich, Germany
- **Also known as:** Фолькер Брух, ولکر بروخ
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Bruch, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2530909, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1432815/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/23182

## Coming up

- *Lapland War* (2026-10-23)

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Babylon Berlin*](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md) (82)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Volker Bruch

> Volker Bruch keeps things back. His Gereon Rath in *Babylon Berlin* hides a tremor rather than show it, and Bruch plays the man that way throughout. It makes him a dependable anchor for a large cast and a lead who is easy to look past.

Watch his hands. In *Babylon Berlin* (2017) Gereon Rath comes from Cologne to recover a film reel, and the first thing Bruch tells us about him is not what he wants but what he is hiding: his hands shake, and he covers it with morphine rather than let anyone see. That is the performance in small. Bruch plays men who keep things back, and he plays Rath so consistently closed that for long stretches he is the least interesting person in his own story. That is an odd thing to say about a lead, and in this case it is partly the design of the series.

The career has been almost entirely twentieth-century Germany. After small television parts, 2008 put him in the ensembles of *The Reader*, *The Baader Meinhof Complex* and *The Red Baron*, where he was Lothar von Richthofen. The breakthrough was *Generation War* (2013), the miniseries about five friends in the Second World War, with Bruch as Wilhelm Winter at its centre. Then Rath, a part he has held across five series through 2026 and which has given him an audience abroad. Philipp Kadelbach has directed him twice. The English-language work, *The Girl in the Spider's Web* (2018) and *Race for Glory: Audi vs. Lancia* (2024), has so far been a sideline.

What works is the stillness. A cast the size of *Babylon Berlin*'s needs someone who does not compete for attention, and Bruch lets a scene happen around him and registers it a beat late, while Liv Lisa Fries's Charlotte Ritter does the moving. Most actors cannot bear not to be watched; he can. We were more affected by those hidden hands than by anything Rath says aloud, because Bruch never asks us to notice them. We caught him at it, and felt we had seen something we were not meant to.

The same reserve is the cost. Over a long run we cannot always tell whether Rath is closed because there is something inside or because that is what the actor has brought, and the series around him is so busy that the question can go unanswered for an hour at a time. Bruch has said of the part that "Viele Wege führen zum Absturz", many roads lead to the fall, and the writers have given him a good many roads. He walks them all at the same careful pace.

He is a period actor by habit as much as by casting, and the hats and coats suit him. We would like to see him in the present day, in a part where nobody lets him hide his hands.

## Biography

Volker Bruch is a German actor. He was born on 9 March 1980 in Munich and trained at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna from 2001 to 2004.

Bruch is best known for his leading roles as Wilhelm Winter in the 2013 television drama *Generation War* and as Inspector Gereon Rath in the series *Babylon Berlin* (2017–present). He has appeared in films including *The Reader* (2008), *The Baader Meinhof Complex* (2008) and *The Girl in the Spider's Web* (2018). For his work in *Babylon Berlin*, he received a 2018 Grimme-Preis.

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

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Babylon Berlin* (2017), Fi1m 82, as Gereon Rath — [page](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md)

## Complete filmography (50)

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

- *Lapland War* (2026), Acting
- *This Is Gonna Be Great* (2024), series, as Toerist
- *Race for Glory: Audi vs. Lancia* (2024), as Walter Röhrl
- *The Path* (2022), as Ludwig
- *Rocca Changes the World* (2019), as Henning
- *The Girl in the Spider's Web* (2018), as Peter Ahlgren
- *Babylon Berlin* (2017), series, as Gereon Rath — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md)
- *The Man with the Iron Heart* (2017), as Schellenberg
- *Part of Us* (2016), as Micki
- *Suck Me Shakespeer 2* (2015), as Hauke Wölki
- *Outside the Box* (2015), as Frederick Schopner
- *Das goldene Ufer* (2015), as Walther
- *Tour de Force* (2014), as Finn
- *Beste Chance* (2014), as Toni
- *München Mord* (2014), series, as Toni Bernlocher
- *Radical Evil* (2014), as Voice
- *Die Pilgerin* (2014), series, as Otfried Willinger
- *Generation War* (2013), series, as Wilhelm Winter
- *Confession of a Child of the Century* (2012), as Henri Smith
- *Treasure Guards* (2011), as Luca
- *Westwind* (2011), as Nico
- *Young Goethe in Love* (2010), as Wilhelm Jerusalem
- *Nanga Parbat* (2010), as Gerhard Baur
- *The Murder Farm* (2009), as Johann Hauer
- *Little Paris* (2008), as Stefan
- *The Reader* (2008), as Dieter Spenz
- *Machen wir's auf Finnisch* (2008), as Matti
- *Einer bleibt sitzen* (2008), as Michel
- *The Baader Meinhof Complex* (2008), as Stefan Aust
- *The Best Place to Be* (2008), as Toni
- *The Red Baron* (2008), as Lothar von Richthofen
- *Female Agents* (2008), as Lieutenant Becker
- *Beste Zeit* (2007), as Toni
- *Nichts ist vergessen* (2007), as Olaf Stahmann
- *Life Actually* (2007), as Charles Spatz
- *Der Untergang der Pamir* (2006), Acting
- *Der Staatsanwalt* (2005), series, as Bastian Tressen
- *Rose* (2005), as Axi
- *Baal* (2004), as Johannes
- *Unter weißen Segeln* (2004), series, as Florian
- *Getting a Life* (2003), Acting
- *Murder in the Mountains* (2001), series, as Julian Schweiger
- *SOKO Leipzig* (2001), series, as Marco Hoss
- *SK Kölsch* (1999), series, as Bert Wunderlich
- *Vater wider Willen* (1998), series, as Sammy
- *Die Verbrechen des Professor Capellari* (1998), series, as Bernd Geissler
- *Inspector Rex* (1994), series, as Max König
- *Ein starkes Team* (1994), series, as Tim König
- *Scene of the Crime* (1970), series, as Lars Quinn "Tony", Oliver Bendler, Volker Bensch, Klaus Zadera
- *Legacy of Spies*, series, as Emmanuel Rapp

## Gallery

- ![Volker Bruch](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-57bccdc82d73.jpg) Volker Bruch — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Volker_Bruch%2C_Hin_und_weg_Kinotour_%28cropped%29.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Florian David Fitz zusammen mit Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-836bfd840c8d.jpg) Florian David Fitz zusammen mit Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014 — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Florian_David_Fitz_zusammen_mit_Volker_Bruch%2C_Kinotour_Hin_und_weg.JPG/1280px-Florian_David_Fitz_zusammen_mit_Volker_Bruch%2C_Kinotour_Hin_und_weg.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Florian David Fitz zusammen mit Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-f35a7b51a783.jpg) Florian David Fitz zusammen mit Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014 — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Florian_David_Fitz_zusammen_mit_Volker_Bruch.JPG/1280px-Florian_David_Fitz_zusammen_mit_Volker_Bruch.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Jan Böhmermann und Joko Winterscheidt bei der Grimme-Preis-Verleihung 2018](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-6129f21bf782.jpg) Jan Böhmermann und Joko Winterscheidt bei der Grimme-Preis-Verleihung 2018 — JCS, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Grimme-Preis_2018_-_Jan_und_Joko_2.JPG/1280px-Grimme-Preis_2018_-_Jan_und_Joko_2.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Volker Bruch](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-f9352f784aaf.jpg) Volker Bruch — Image via TMDB
- ![Volker Bruch](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-9082c5ca8609.jpg) Volker Bruch — Image via TMDB
- ![Preisträger bei der Grimme-Preis-Verleihung 2018](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-6da73fbb8e81.jpg) Preisträger bei der Grimme-Preis-Verleihung 2018 — JCS, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Grimme-Preis_2018_-_Preistr%C3%A4ger_7.JPG/1280px-Grimme-Preis_2018_-_Preistr%C3%A4ger_7.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014](https://film.one/media/person/976721/gallery-af8351222ec8.jpg) Volker Bruch, Hin und weg Kinotour-Dortmund 2014 — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Volker_Bruch%2C_Hin_und_weg_Kinotour.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)

## Awards

### Other awards — 3 won

- Goldene Kamera 2018: Goldene Kamera (won), for *Babylon Berlin*
- Grimme-Preis 2018: Grimme-Preis (won), for *Babylon Berlin*
- Bavarian TV Awards 2013: Bavarian TV Awards (won), for *Generation War*

*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/volker-bruch