Biography:

Jaecki Schwarz, born on February 26, 1946 in East Berlin, played in a school theater group and the Deutsches Theater at a young age. Although he was fascinated by theater, he started a photochemistry apprenticeship, and later attended the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. His first engagement was at the Städtische Bühnen Magdeburg and, from 1974-1997, Schwarz was a member of the Berliner Ensemble. He played leading parts in plays by Maxim Gorki and Bertolt Brecht, as well as the role of Stalin in Volker Braun’s “Lenins Tod” (“Lenin’s Death”). In 1997, he began to focus more exclusively on film work, but still occasionally appeared on stage.  

Schwarz’s highly successful film career took off when he was 20 years old and still a student; the renowned East German DEFA director, Konrad Wolf, cast him as the lead in his autobiographical film, Ich war neunzehn. After this breakthrough Schwarz acted in many DEFA productions. More recently, he has been a regular on German television: he plays the police commissioner in the popular TV series Polizeiruf 110 (since 1996); Professor Friedländer in the hospital series Für alle Fälle Stefanie (since 2000); and the innkeeper Sputnik in Ein starkes Team (since 1994).

In 2016, Schwarz played alongside Dieter Mann, Henry Hübchen, Michael and Gwisdek Wilfried Glatzeder in Robert Thalheim’s spy comedy Kundschafter des Friedens.

Jaecki Schwarz has played in over 100 cinema and television productions and lives in Berlin.