Ines Kahnwald 1986

In 1986 Winden, Ines Kahnwald works as a nurse at the hospital and raises her son Michael alone, a practical, no-nonsense woman with little patience for gossip or nonsense. She keeps her household orderly and her feelings guarded, meeting the town's mounting strangeness with brisk skepticism rather than alarm.

Anne Ratte-Polle plays Ines with a flinty, unsentimental warmth that never tips into softness, so when the show's timelines start folding in on themselves, her groundedness becomes the audience's anchor. She's a minor figure who feels lived-in, a woman whose ordinary competence quietly conceals a life stranger than she knows.