Helga "Big Helga" Hahnemann was an East German multi-faceted stage performer and entertainer.
13 Facts About Helga Hahnemann
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Helga Hahnemann came to wider prominence through her television and radio appearances after 1962.
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Helga Hahnemann fell terminally ill and then died shortly afterwards, possibly because of the extent of her addiction to cigarettes: she was 54.
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Helga Hahnemann's death left unanswered the question of how successfully her performances might have captivated pan-German television audiences post unification.
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Helga "Henne" Hahnemann was born in Berlin-Wilhelmsruh, the youngest of her parents' four children, a couple of years before war broke out.
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Helga Hahnemann later told an interviewer that she discovered her talent for comedy while still at school.
7.
Helga Hahnemann found Leipzig did not suit her and returned in 1961 or 1962 to Berlin, where she concentrated on cabaret and comedy genres, working on a freelance basis, primarily with one-woman programmes.
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Helga Hahnemann's work covered television and radio work as well as voice-acting assignments.
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Helga Hahnemann remained on the payroll for the next 21 years, despite an annual salary of 1,500 Ostmarks, which even then was a relatively modest amount: by 1990 it had increased to 2,100 Ostmarks.
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The material Helga Hahnemann was now using made her "the voice of the little man".
11.
Helga Hahnemann appeared regularly alongside Rolf Herricht, Gerd E Schafer, Margot Ebert, Traute Sense and Heinz Behrens in her role as "Erna Mischke" in the long-running light-hearted television drama series Maxe Baumann.
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Helga Hahnemann set about trying to win over audiences in a very different kind of Germany, in which western social and economic norms tended to trump those that had emerged in the east under Soviet socialism.
13.
Sources indicate that "Big Helga Hahnemann" had long been noted as a big eater, and she was a heavy smoker.