A key figure in the stock company of gifted actors who came to prominence in the dynamic movement known as "New German Cinema" in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Vogler is best known as a cinematic alter ego of filmmaker Wim Wenders. A slender man with wavy, dirty-blond hair, a long face and a somewhat glum expression, Vogler attended music school in Heidelberg but began as a film actor the year after his graduation. His second film credit, a small role in "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" (1971), marked his first collaboration with Wenders, and several years later Vogler was playing leads for the director. In "Alice in the Cities" (1974), Vogler first personified the footloose Philip Winter, a role--or at least, a character name--he would essay for several other Wenders films over the next two decades.
After wandering with Alice, the little girl of the title in one Wenders road movie, Vogler essayed another journey for the director in "Wrong Movement" (1975) as a man stymied in his roles as both poet and lover. He followed up with Wenders' masterful, leisurely and somewhat more comic "Kings of the Road" (1976), in which two men amble through Germany encountering a barren cinema culture. Vogler made such an impact in this trilogy that later filmmakers tended to capitalize on either the adventurous wanderer image (e.g., "The Left-Handed Woman" 1977) or else the moody, thoughtful side to his persona (e.g., "Last Love" 1979), without quite combining the two as successfully as Wenders. Some filmmakers deliberately used Vogler for his iconic value, as a stand-in of sorts for Wenders' political viewpoints; Margarethe von Trotta's important "Marianne and Julianne/The German Sisters" (1981) is an intriguing example of the latter.
During the 80s Vogler, whose earlier credits had been mostly West German, increasingly expanded his work into many different European cinemas, with roles in French and Italian films. He worked primarily in crime drama, with a smattering of credits in historical recreations; in "Der Havarist/Voyager" (1984), for example, he was one of three actors playing Hollywood star Sterling Hayden as he recounts his travails. In the 90s, Vogler reteamed with Wenders, conjuring up Philip Winter in the international sci-fi road picture, "Until the End of the World" (1991), the post-Cold War Berlin-set fantasy "Faraway, So Close" (1993) and the noirish "Lisbon Story" (1995).