In celebrating the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolution that brought down the Wall, we will profile over the course of 2009 important East Germans who have shaped beyond all physical borders the cultural, intellectual and political life of postwar Germany and Europe.

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Armin Mueller-Stahl in Bremen, Germany, where he received an award for promoting international dialogue and understanding in 2005.

(© dpa - Report)

Armin Mueller-Stahl is known to international audiences through his performances in films such as David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.

He is equally renowned for his roles in German-language productions, including a critically acclaimed turn as the great 20th-century writer Thomas Mann in the award-winning miniseries Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman (The Manns - A Novel of the Century).

Like several of his prominent counterparts who began their careers in the former GDR, such as German actor Manfred Krug, he also has his own personal East-Meets-West tale to tell.

Renaissance Man

In the vein of a bona fide renaissance man of the arts, Mueller-Stahl, 78, is an actor, director, musician, painter and writer.

"Art always must fix what the politicians have messed up," he told German news agency dpa in February, 2009. "When politicians tear open the graves, we must build the bridges ... Politicians are not aware enough just how much art can do for understanding between peoples today. Politicians say: What do you want to achieve with music or films? That is just a drop of water on a hot stone."

Young Violin Virtuoso

Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast), into a family of five children, as the son of Editta and Alfred Mueller-Stahl, a bank teller. He grew up in a highly creative environment - the family painted and made music together - and was a noted concert violinist as a teenager.

His father was shot by what Mueller-Stahl presumes were German soldiers on May 1, 1945, and he himself barely escaped being shot by Russian soldiers at the time, had a brave Polish farmhand not stepped in to prevent his untimely murder.

In postwar East Germany, after initially entertaining the idea of becoming a professional violinist, Mueller-Stahl turned to acting in East Berlin, where he landed his first permanent gig at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1952. 

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Armin Mueller-Stahl as Thomas Mann in the award-winnnig miniseries "Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman".

(© dpa - Report)

James Bond of the East

Moving after 1960 on to both the big and small screen in East Germany, Mueller-Stahl was declared the country's most popular actor five times in a row, starring in some 75 films produced by the Berlin-based DEFA film studios such as The Third and Jacob, the Liar.

On East German TV, he played the main character of the popular series Das unsichtbare Visier from 1973 to 1979. This spy thriller program was designed, in cooperation with the Stasi, the infamous East German secret police, as an East Bloc counterpart to the James Bond franchise.

Yet after protesting against singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's denaturalization in 1976 he was blacklisted by the government in retaliation for his endorsement of a manifesto critical of the regime. He used this "exile" to write the critically acclaimed Ordered Sunday, a book which chronicles this difficult period in his life.

He emigrated to the former West Germany in 1980.

Globetrotting Movie Star 

After 1980, Mueller-Stahl resumed his acting career under the aegis of the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who asked him to star in Lola and Veronika Voss. He also starred in Andrej Wajda's A Love in Germany, Istvan Szabo's Academy Award-winning Colonel Redl and Agnieszka Holland's Angry Harvest, for which he won the Best Actor prize at the Montreal Film Festival.

Beyond Europe, Mueller-Stahl is moreover known for his performances in such films as Costa-Gavras' highly acclaimed The Music Box (co-starring Jessica Lange), Barry Levinson's Avalon, George Sluizer's Utz, Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth, John Avildsen's The Power of One and Steven Soderbergh's Kafka.

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Armin Mueller-Stahl presenting his book "Unterwegs nach Hause" (On the Road Home) at the Leipzig Book Fair in 1997.

(© dpa/COLORplus)

He won the Silver Bear for Best Actor in the 1992 Berlinale for his performance in Utz. And he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1996 film Shine.

He is also remembered for his role as the Soviet general in charge of the occupied United States in the 1987 ABC television miniseries Amerika.

In 2004, Mueller-Stahl made another rare foray into American television, guest-starring in four episodes on the The West Wing as the prime minister of Israel.

In 2008, he won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Eastern Promises. In 2009, he appeared in Angels & Demons as Cardinal Strauss.

In Germany, he starred in 2008 as the patrician patriach Johann 'Jean' Buddenbrook in the movie Die Buddenbrooks, based on the international bestseller by Thomas Mann, set in the author's hometown Baltic Sea harbor city of Lübeck.

Mueller-Stahl has been married since 1973 to Gabriele Scholz. Together they have one son. The family resides primarily in Los Angeles.