TV Family Trees
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Dark · A Viewer's Companion

Four families, one small town — and a tree that keeps growing back into itself.

This is the show whose fans famously watched with a fan-made family tree open in another tab. Here is that tab. Winden has four families — Kahnwald (yellow), Nielsen (teal), Doppler (green), Tiedemann (violet) — drawn once each, as one ordinary genealogy. The un-ordinary part is in dashed red: every place where time travel makes someone their own ancestor. Fair warning before you scroll: in Dark the family tree is not background — it is the twist. This page is one continuous spoiler for all three seasons.

Kahnwald Nielsen Doppler Tiedemann marriage parent → child time loop — impossible but true; read its label † dies on screen — full series
m. m. m. m. m. Mikkel falls through the caves to 1986 — adopted by nurse Ines, grows up as Michael stranded in 1888, Bartosz marries Silja; their children: Agnes & Noah his father: the Unknown the Unknown travels back to 1953 and, with Agnes, fathers Tronte — the knot closes on itself their son — “the Origin” — born of two different worlds Charlotte’s mother is Elisabeth — her own daughter their son Agnes Nielsen arrives in 1953 · Sic Mundus Antje Traue Bartosz’s daughter Ines Kahnwald the nurse of Winden hospital Urzendowsky · Ratte-Polle · Winkler adopts Mikkel in 1986 Egon Tiedemann † the policeman, 1953 & 1986 Hülk · Pätzold father of Silja (with Hannah) Helge Doppler † kidnapped boy → Noah’s helper Philipp · Schneider · Beyer † crashing into his own past Tronte Nielsen father of Ulrich & Mads Marlon · Kramer · Kreye son of the Unknown Jana Nielsen Tronte’s wife Tatja Seibt (older Jana) mother of Ulrich & Mads Claudia Tiedemann power-plant boss · traveler Göbel · Jenkins · Kreuzer “the White Devil” Ulrich Nielsen detective · trapped in 1953 Masucci · Bökelmann · Glatzeder Mikkel’s father Katharina † school principal Jördis Triebel · Nele Trebs † 1987, searching for her son Regina † runs the Winden hotel Kaufmann · Makrides her father: never confirmed Aleksander plant director Benedict · Gabor Lenz really: Boris Niewald Peter Doppler † therapist · Helge’s son Stephan Kampwirth maps the knot in the bunker Charlotte Winden’s police chief Eichhorn · Amarell raised by Tannhaus Magnus Nielsen Ulrich’s eldest Moritz Jahn joins Sic Mundus as an adult Martha Nielsen a.k.a. Eva in the other world Lisa Vicari · Nüsse (as Eva) loves Jonas (her nephew) Mikkel = Michael † the boy who fell to 1986 Liebrenz · Rudolph Jonas’s father Hannah Kahnwald née Krüger · Michael’s wife Maja Schöne · Ella Lee touches all four families Bartosz Regina’s son · Jonas’s friend Paul Lux becomes Noah’s father Franziska the older Doppler daughter Gina Stiebitz Magnus’s girlfriend Elisabeth deaf · leads the survivors von Falkenhayn · Borgmann her daughter is her mother Jonas Kahnwald a.k.a. the Stranger · Adam Hofmann · Pietschmann · Hollinderbäumer the boy in the yellow jacket The Unknown son of Jonas & Martha Jakob Diehl (as the adult) Tronte’s father
Hover any portrait to enlarge it. Solid grey lines are ordinary parent-to-child descent and gold ties are marriages — but every dashed red line marks a place where time travel makes the impossible literal, so follow its label. Mikkel’s card wears two colors: a teal Nielsen border for the family he was born into, a yellow Kahnwald ring for the one he grew up in. This is one genealogical chart, not a timeline — who is standing in which decade (or which world) is untangled in the cards below. Covers all three seasons.

The five facts that carry the whole show

Every dashed red line above, spelled out — plus the one piece of vocabulary you need. Terminal spoilers ahead.

The Season 1 bomb

Mikkel is Michael

In 2019, eleven-year-old Mikkel Nielsen walks into the caves and comes out in 1986. Nurse Ines Kahnwald adopts him, and he grows up to be Michael Kahnwald — the man whose suicide opens episode one. Which means Ulrich is Jonas’s grandfather, the missing boy Ulrich is hunting is Jonas’s own father… and Martha, the girl Jonas loves, is his aunt.

The closed circle

Charlotte’s mother is her own daughter

Charlotte grew up with the clockmaker Tannhaus, parents unknown. Season 3 answers it: her parents are Noah and Elisabeth — and Elisabeth is Charlotte’s own daughter. Baby Charlotte is carried back through time to be raised before her mother is born. The two women are, permanently and simultaneously, each other’s mothers. There is no first Charlotte. That’s the point.

The Origin

Jonas + Martha = every Nielsen

Jonas and the other world’s Martha have a son the show only ever calls the Unknown. He travels to the past and, with Agnes, fathers Tronte Nielsen — Ulrich’s father, Mikkel’s grandfather. Follow the chain: Jonas → the Unknown → Tronte → Ulrich → Mikkel/Michael → Jonas. Jonas is his own great-great-great-grandfather, and the whole Nielsen line hangs from his son.

The endgame players

Adam and Eva are Jonas and Martha

Adam, the scarred old man running the Sic Mundus cult, is Jonas at the end of his life. Eva, his opposite number, is the other world’s Martha grown old. Each leads a faction fighting to steer the loop — he to destroy the knot, she to preserve it forever. On the chart they share their younger selves’ cards: one person, three actors, listed on the actor line.

The vocabulary

Two worlds, one sentence

From Season 2’s end there are two mirror-image Windens — Jonas’s world (where Martha dies) and Martha’s world (where Jonas never existed) — both accidental copies spun out of a third, origin world, where the clockmaker Tannhaus tried to bring his dead family back with a time machine. That’s it. That’s the sentence.

The connector

Hannah touches everything

Hannah Krüger marries Michael (a Kahnwald by adoption, a Nielsen by birth), spends decades in love with Ulrich, then strands herself in 1954 and has a daughter, Silja, with Egon Tiedemann. Silja later marries Bartosz and bears Agnes and Noah — making Hannah both Jonas’s mother and, through Agnes, an ancestor of every Nielsen on this chart. Four families, one Hannah.

The disambiguation desk

Same characters at three ages, same faces in two worlds. The mix-ups people actually make, settled:

One Jonas, three actors

Louis Hofmann is teenage Jonas, Andreas Pietschmann is the mid-life “Stranger” in the beanie, and Dietrich Hollinderbäumer is Adam, the scarred old man. Same person, one card on the chart.

One Martha, two worlds

Lisa Vicari plays both worlds’ Marthas — jacket and haircut are your only clues — and Barbara Nüsse plays Eva, the elderly Martha of world two. If a “dead” Martha walks in, she’s the other world’s.

Mikkel vs. Michael

Not father and son, not two characters: the same person at two ages. Daan Lennard Liebrenz plays the boy, Sebastian Rudolph the man he becomes in 1986–2019.

Noah, Agnes & the Unknown

Noah and Agnes are siblings — Bartosz and Silja’s children, born in the past. Agnes’s son is Tronte; Tronte’s father is the Unknown, not Noah. Noah’s child is Charlotte, with Elisabeth.

Regina’s father

Never confirmed on screen. Claudia tells Tronte the child was his — but the finale shows Regina alive in the restored world, which only works if she was never descended from the knot. Treat it as Dark’s one deliberately open blank.

Aleksander “Tiedemann”

Not born a Tiedemann at all: he arrived in 1986 as Boris Niewald, carrying a false passport, married Regina and took her name. Bartosz is his son.

Mads Nielsen

Ulrich’s little brother, who vanished in 1986 — and whose unaged body drops into 2019, starting the whole investigation. Kidnapped for the bunker experiments; he never gets a card because he never gets a life.

Sic Mundus

Adam’s time-traveler lodge (“Sic Mundus Creatus Est”). Its hooded adults include grown-up Magnus and Franziska — so when two strangers in 1921 look oddly familiar, trust your eyes.

Not on the tree — but holding it together

Noah as seen in the show, played by Mark Waschke

Noah †

Mark Waschke · Max Schimmelpfennig

Born Hanno Tauber: Bartosz’s son, Agnes’s brother, and — with Elisabeth — Charlotte’s father. The priest who steals children for the time experiments, until his own sister shoots him.

H.G. Tannhaus as seen in the show, played by Christian Steyer

H.G. Tannhaus

Christian Steyer

The clockmaker who raises foundling Charlotte and literally wrote the book on time travel. In the origin world, his grief for a son lost in a car crash builds the machine that splits reality in two.

Silja Tiedemann as seen in the show, played by Lea van Acken

Silja Tiedemann

Lea van Acken

Hannah and Egon’s daughter, raised in the post-apocalyptic future as Elisabeth’s interpreter — then stranded in the 1890s, where she marries Bartosz and bears Agnes and Noah.

Torben Wöller as seen in the show, played by Leopold Hornung

Torben Wöller

Leopold Hornung

The one-eyed cop, and the show’s single running joke: every time he starts to explain how he lost the eye, something interrupts him — including the final scene of the entire series.

Scope: the full series — all three seasons, both worlds, and the origin world of the finale. In Dark the family tree is not background lore; it is the twist, which means this chart IS the spoiler — if you are mid-watch, close the tab and come back later. † marks characters who die on screen, though in Winden death rarely keeps anyone off screen, and in the finale nearly everyone drawn above is gently unraveled out of existence along with the knot itself. Portraits are stills from the Dark wiki, cropped and self-hosted so they load without leaning on anyone else’s servers.