Matthias Brandt

Matthias Brandt was born in Berlin in 1961 and is now regarded as one of Germany’s most prominent actors and voice artists. In his early acting career, he was an ensemble member at a series of theatres including Nationaltheater Mannheim, Schauspielhaus Zürich and Schauspielhaus Bochum. After a long break from the theatre, he is now a member of the Berliner Ensemble, where he performs the Max Frisch monologue Mein Name sei Gantenbein and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. He regularly devises improvised collages of words and music together with the musician and performer Jens Thomas which they perform live.

For many years Matthias Brandt has specialised in working for film and television, for which he has won numerous awards. He became familiar to a broader television audience as the Munich detective Hanns von Meuffels in the crime series Polizeiruf 110 and in the role of August Benda in the series Babylon Berlin. He also enjoys an intensive working relationship with the auteur filmmaker Christian Petzold and was recently seen in his films Miroirs No. 3 (2025) and Afire (2023).

Brandt’s work also includes narrating audio books and acting in radio plays. In 2014 he won the Deutscher Hörbuchpreis for his reading of the Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World.  

Matthias Brandt is also a published author: his volume of short stories Raumpatrouille, published in 2016, consists of autobiographical sketches from his childhood, and was followed in 2019 by his debut novel Blackbird. March 2026 will see the publication, also by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, of his essay Nein sagen. In light of the increasing threats to democracy from racism and xenophobia, Brandt recalls the legacy of resistance to the Nazis and the courage of those resistance fighters, who included his parents.  

Matthias Brandt was awarded the Carl Zuckmayer Medal in 2024 and the Deutscher Sprachpreis in 2025.