Adam Wolke (SkylineTV)

The death of Adam Wolke was announced on Tuesday 20 October 2026 by Jens "Knossi" Knossalla and Verena Ullrich in a joint Instagram post. They wrote: "It is with deep sadness that we have to tell you that our Adam has sadly passed away. He suffered a severe brain haemorrhage as a result of a ruptured brain aneurysm. We were by his side until the very end and accompanied him on his final journey." His management confirmed the death to Der Spiegel and to Bild.

The announcement itself did not give a date, but Bild reported that he had died on Sunday 18 October 2026, the date also given by German Wikipedia. The place of death has not been made public. Most outlets reported his age as 36, while Bild reported 38.

In his last stream before his death, Wolke had described unusual symptoms, including black spots in his vision and feeling drunk without having had any alcohol. The streamer Zarbex later said on his own stream that a small circle of friends had known about his condition and had hoped he would recover. Dozens of creators paid tribute on Instagram, and fans left messages of condolence in the chat on his website. No funeral details have been published.

Adam Wolke grew up in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, in a community of Jehovah's Witnesses. In a 2024 conversation with the streamer Trymacs, reported by ingame.de, he described how he had distanced himself from the community as a teenager, saying it was simply not for him. He also spoke about leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses in an episode of the ZDF funk talk show Henke's Corner in 2025.

German Wikipedia gives his date of birth as 3 October 1988, but reports at the time of his death differed on his age, so no birth date is stated here as confirmed.

Wolke began streaming live from the street around 2012 and 2013, first irregularly on the video portal MyVideo, and experimented early with mobile full HD streams outside the usual streaming room. He is described by Der Spiegel, Die Welt and 20 Minuten as one of the first, if not the first, IRL streamers in Germany and Europe.

From 2014 he co-hosted the YouTube programme Netzprediger with Fabian Nolte, becoming its main presenter from 2016 to 2018. In December 2014 he released the first episode of SkylineTV, a produced travel and city show, from New York City, with most episodes following in 2015. In 2017 he relaunched the brand as SkylineTV Live, beginning with a short live tour and settling into a weekly Thursday evening broadcast, the first regular episode coming from Berlin on 23 March 2017. Viewers could influence the stream through the live chat, choosing directions or sending text to speech messages, and chance conversations with passers by were at the heart of the format.

He streamed from festivals, gaming fairs, theme parks and journeys abroad, and also appeared in the web format Die Mediatheke between 2018 and 2020. Behind the scenes he was known for his technical expertise, producing ambitious live broadcasts for Knossi, MontanaBlack and Trymacs. In 2024 he won Big Brother Knossi Edition. By October 2026 his Twitch channel SkylineTVlive had more than 265,000 followers and his YouTube channel around 132,000 subscribers.

Wolke lived in Frankfurt am Main in his later years. He was a close friend of Jens Knossalla and his wife Lia, who after his death wrote that he would always remain their child and that nobody could ever replace him. Those closest to him asked the public to respect the privacy of his family, relatives and friends.

Wolke is remembered as a pioneer of IRL streaming in German speaking Europe, broadcasting live from the street years before the format became one of the most popular categories on Twitch. His weekly SkylineTV Live broadcasts built a loyal community over nearly a decade, and his technical work helped make some of the largest German live productions possible. Der Spiegel called him one of the most significant German livestreamers, an IRL icon before the genre had its breakthrough.