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The Bench.
In June of 2015, almost exactly a year after Helga was arrested at the Dusseldorf airport, an auction was held to sell off the 2,300 pieces in his personal art collection. The money was to be used to help pay down the damages Helga owed the Albrechts, nearly 20 million euros. Sensing both PR and bottom-line opportunities, several auction houses maneuvered to host the sale.
Eventually, a company based in Cologne won the bid. You might remember Markus from our first episode.
He's the guy who admired one of Helga's art funds. Markus met Helga not long after he began running Van Ham. In the 1990s, Helga approached Markus about selling off some of his lesser pieces. But the deal never happened, Markus says, because Helga thought the art should be priced higher than what Markus was comfortable selling it for. If you set the prices too high, nobody bids, and then you don't have an auction in the end. So this was the point where we didn't get together properly.
For the 2015 auction, competing visions wouldn't be a problem. Helga was observing the whole thing from jail. Markus was in charge. And, as with Helga's trial, the German media once again pounced on this juicy moment.
The Achenbach auction in Düsseldorf and Cologne was a promotion of the superlative. 4.5 million euros could be worth the works of art by Helge Achenbach. For the art world, the case of Achenbach was a hammer and his epic collection is now among the few.
Adding to the pressure, Markus only had three months to organize a public auction far bigger than any he'd run before. They ended up having two of them, one in Dusseldorf and one in Cologne.
and it was incredibly short time and
Extremely challenging because you can imagine if you have to set up a sale in such a short time in an environment you're not used to, which is not meant to make a sale and everything. It was really very challenging. But anyway, we handled this and it turned out very well. So well that on the first morning of the auction, some 250 would-be bidders stood in line waiting to enter the sales room.
15 telephone operators stood by to take bids from around the world. In a Dusseldorf warehouse, Markus, wielding the gavel for Van Ham, led the bidding. Three paintings by Gerhard Richter brought in the most cash. One of his abstracts went for more than €316,000.
A Frank Stella piece was sold for nearly $124,000. All of the Jorg Immendorff bronze monkey sculptures in Helga's collection, the same pieces that once adorned his restaurants, found new homes. Everybody was crazy about those monkeys. Nobody wanted to leave the room without buying one of those funny monkeys. In the end, every single piece from Helga's collection sold at the Van Ham auction. Marcus was given the traditional white gloves, which are handed to an auctioneer who oversees a complete sale.
In marketing materials, Van Ham crowed about the accomplishment. Quote, "It was the largest auction of contemporary art that has ever taken place in Germany." All the sales together raised something like 8 million Euro. This is for us and for a German sale, it's quite a big number. If you compare it to an evening sale for Chris or Sotheby's, it's not a big thing to mention about.
But anyway, for us it was a big sale, so it's just big fun. Not everyone, however, was delighted. He made his fortune on this auction, of course, but he was so stupid, so incredibly stupid that he started with estimations you cannot believe. For example, I bought a great painting from an American artist, a young coming-up artist for $150,000 in New York.
and he did not know the artist, so he said it's value of 5 to 10,000. So with such an evaluation,
You cannot reach, realistically, prices. And this happened quite often. So they were like idiots. They were like non-experienced people having a treasure in their hand. So that was something which I really hate. Did you ever speak with the auction house? Yes, I told him that I think he's an asshole. So after the sale, yes, I got in touch with him. And of course, he says...
I've had such horrible prices only and he would have got so much better prices for everything. And we did. I mean, everybody in the market will tell you we've had really, really great prices. And I said, honestly, you fucked me completely because you know that it was minimum triple worth what you received.
Helge said here he was killed for the second time. The first time being when he got caught cheating Berthold and went to jail. But the truth is, Helge isn't dead yet. When he gets out of jail, he still has a lot of life in him. A lot left he wants to do.
And it all starts on an abandoned pig farm in the German countryside. From Campside Media, in association with Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Bijan Steven, and this is Chameleon, Gallery of Lies. Episode 4, Borders. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
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You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. When Helga left the Essen prison after two years, he was 66 years old and had lost a lot more than time. The stats were unpleasant. He'd lost seven homes in Germany and on Lanzarote, 30 vintage cars, and those 2,300 pieces of art Van Ham had auctioned off. And even some of his family was slipping away. 24 months behind bars would have been hard for the strongest of marriages, but he was
But by the time Helga was released into open prison, his union with Dorothy was far from that. Helga told me that while he was in jail, Dorothy discovered that he'd been having relationships with other women. Including a student in New York City he was sending thousands of dollars to every month to help cover her rent. A year after he left Essen, Helga and Dorothy would be divorced.
But while Helga had lost plenty in a shockingly short amount of time, he still had some friends in helpful places. That much was clear on his first day of freedom. That first day back out in the world, Helga said he was given a free haircut by his longtime barber and a free lunch at his favorite Italian restaurant for him and six of his kids. And that wasn't all he'd secure on his freebie binge.
There was one other gift that day, from one more friend: the owner of a car dealership. So he gave me a BMW, number one, so the smallest one in white. He said, "You can have it for the next year, but don't crash it." Wheels secured, Helga went in search of a location for the idea he'd struck upon in jail: culture without borders.
He envisioned it as a refuge for artists around the world struggling against oppression and persecution. Before too long, he found the perfect spot. An abandoned 13.5-acre pig farm in Karst, about 15 minutes' drive west of Dusseldorf, big enough to house a rotating cast of artists. To pay for the farm and the renovations done by Helga's friend, the British architect David Chipperfield, Helga called on the part of his network that hadn't deserted him. His wealthy, connected friends.
what he calls his, quote, industrial friends. Then he convinced about 50 other people to become Culture Without Borders members. Some of them pay 120 euros a year for individual memberships. Company memberships go for 2,500 euros a pop. On our second day in Dusseldorf, Mac and I hop into Birdie, our beloved electric car, to visit the farm and meet some of the people who have stayed friends with Helga.
I'm curious to hear what they make of Helga's post-prison life and why they stuck with him. Turn left of all your stress to the speed limit. Oh my god. We exit the Autobahn onto a long, straight road surrounded by farmland. Soon, we arrive at a sign announcing Culture Without Borders in carved wooden letters hammered into the ground. Planted near the sign are the flags of Germany and the European Union. Just past the sign, there's a sculpture of the Black Power Fist.
Mack parks Birdie, and we wander around the three main buildings looking for the people we're supposed to meet. Behind a creaky wooden door, we find a kitchen. And just like that, we're in a room that could easily be the communal space of a liberal arts college, only slightly cleaner. There's a sturdy wooden table and a parquet floor. A coffee pot is churning.
Standing in the kitchen is a tall, slender painter and sculptor named Armin Baumgarten, who lives in Dusseldorf but often works at Culture Without Borders. Armin explains that running the organization is pretty much an all-hands-on-deck situation. It's difficult, difficult to describe what I do. I do everything. We have everyone, every artist do here everything. I make my art and look for the other artists' work.
Mack and I quickly see what Armen means in an adjacent room.
There, he has created paintings of glittery, purple, mysterious figures on canvases so tall they almost reach the ceiling. Armin tells us that the process for getting invited to Culture Without Borders can be incredibly informal. Sometimes, out of the blue, Helga just gets in touch. Like with Armin, Helga DMed him on Instagram, and not long after, Armin was working on the farm.
Apparently, Helga's ability to charm, to convince, to coerce, to bend the will of others to his desire, those skills didn't diminish when he was in prison. He's still good at creating experiences. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Ronald F. Carver III.
In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.
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From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to the greatest scam ever written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Helge's old friend Wolfgang Schlepen shows up. They've known one another for four decades.
As a younger man, Wolfgang did quite well selling carpets and now, at 80 years old, has the vibe and style of a semi-retired rich guy. Thick corduroys tucked into dark Uggs, a quilted jacket, a long wool scarf, and an extremely animated manner. He has a nimbus of white hair circling his head and chunky black framed glasses. Like many of Helga's friends, the two men met through business.
Whether it was Helge needing rugs for his restaurants or Helge's architects needing something to cover floors, Wolfgang was the man. There were, also, years that went by when the two men had very little contact. But when Helge landed in jail, his old friend was there for him. In Germany, for example, we have people who make bigger mistakes than this. The court said six years for this. I said, yeah, absolutely crazy.
And I wrote him a letter to the prison and said, "Helga, what happened there? If you come out, let us see." And so we came again together. Wolfgang was one of the handful of old Helga friends who helped get Culture Without Borders off the ground.
Now Wolfgang does administrative tasks for the organization, though sometimes he just pops over to hang. I don't want to stay at home with my wife every day. And I come here and we have a lot of jokes. We say sometimes we are like a Muppet show, you know. If you didn't catch that, he just compared himself to Statler and Waldorf, the old guys in the Muppets who are always making cracks.
Wolfgang leads us into a massive room in the third building. It's a converted barn. An enormous arm and sculpture of a bronze head, a work in progress, sits on a wood block. A long table that could seat maybe 20 people occupies one side of the space. Wolfgang explains that Culture Without Borders members can host private dinners there and attend openings. Wolfgang tells us a beer garden is in the works, and he shows us architectural plans for an ambitious reimagining of the farm's grounds with a wide lake at the center.
I have to marvel. Helga has found a way to do grand art and architectural projects even here, post-prison, on a converted pig farm. Through a wide door, I can see an outdoor sculpture. It's tall, maybe 50 feet high, two spiky points reaching for the sky. The piece is by a well-known French conceptual artist named Bernard Vinay. It's on loan from a Berlin gallery. Not far from the Vinay is a coop containing chickens, turkeys, and peacocks.
Wolfgang tells us that schoolchildren often visit. They like the birds. Right then, Wolfgang's cell phone rings. It's Helge, and he asks to speak with Mac. Hi. Yeah, we're here. Okay. How are you? Everything fine? Yeah, very, very good. How are you? Oh, beautiful. Missing you a little bit. He's missing us a little bit?
This is hard for me to believe. I think what he's missing is his ability to keep tabs on us. Yeah, we have met Wolfgang and Armin and Julia and seen a lot of work. And yeah, it's very cool. Sure, very nice. So I'm very happy. Have you seen my paintings? That's your first question?
It's honestly hard to gauge why Helga is calling.
Is this a friendly check-in? Or is there something else he wants? He was very insistent that we visit the farm, to see how wonderful it all is. I felt like what I imagine his old clients felt when he was selling them on his services, framing the narrative. There is one other artist working at Culture Without Borders today. We find Manuel Graf outside the massive barn, covered in metal dust.
He explains his current work. First, I crossbreed a couple of images of locomotives and early 20th century sculptors in an AI. And then I get flat images. And from these flat images, I make a three-dimensional model in the software. And then I print it out. And now it's getting coated with metal. And some of them are in the foundry.
to have a solid metal object. Manuel has a no-bullshit air of confidence about him. I ask him what he thinks of Helga and what happened with Berthold. The older I get, I have only two criteria I judge people after. The one is the quotient between what they talk and what they in the end do. And his quotient is really good. I think it's one. Maybe a bit bigger, I don't know.
And the other criteria is, are his actions hurtful? And I don't think so. Our last stop on the farm is back in the kitchen. No, Helge told me I must show you one picture. Come on. Last picture. Last picture. Armin points to a painting on the wall above the table. A small square canvas is in a simple wood frame.
There are two snowy mountains under a pale sky. A yellow-green sun, or is it the moon, hovers near a peak. It's the first painting Helge finished in prison, after Anna convinced him to work diligently on smaller canvases. It's called Spirit of Freedom. For me, it's a painting of hope. It's a strong landscape, and you wait for the time after. But it's for me, my impression.
To me, the piece gets at the heart of Culture Without Borders. It's a place Helga's made to nurture artists, to give them the freedom he didn't have in jail. And the artists he's found are doing good work, showing in galleries, and appear to be grateful to have entered the Helga sphere. The organization took unused farmland and, quite literally, spun gold out of pig shit. But this is Helga we're talking about, so of course there's something else here that's important to mention.
Culture Without Borders also seems to function as a kind of dating site for Helga. He met two of his recent girlfriends — that's how he characterizes the relationships — through his organization. One woman Helga says he dated is a Lithuanian painter who is 30 years younger than him. In 2019, according to the German tabloid newspaper Bild, Helga and the painter were planning to get married in a Buddhist ceremony on a beach in either Bali or Thailand. They planned to have a monk bless them.
But then the pandemic hit, and the couple cooled on the plan. During a phone call after we left the island, Helga tells us they remain on good terms. And then it took me also a kind of...
that maybe it's not so important to get married the first time. It was my personal feeling. And she was thinking about having a new start for herself and finding the right position in her life. And
Helga says he doesn't have contact information for the painter and doesn't know how to reach her. The woman he's currently in a relationship with, Aisha, grew up in Paris and now lives semi-off-the-grid in Majorca. She's a 40-something artist, and Helga's helping her publish a book of her paintings. On Lanzarote, he showed it to us.
Helga says Aisha's childhood was lonely and difficult, and the images in the book are stark and often disturbing. There's a painting of a cold metal bed, the one she slept in as a kid. Another depicts a bathtub full of blood, the place her mother died. I can see why Helga compares Aisha's work to Frida Kahlo. Helga says they are not monogamous and that love comes in many forms.
When Mac reached Aisha by phone, over a rough connection, she characterized her dynamic with Helga as familial.
Love is not a man-woman relationship. Love is a state of being. A state of being? Of being. I have a very family feeling with Elgish, yes. Uh-huh. Okay. Yes. So love, but loving, you know? Elgish is like a father for people also. Like a father. Like a guru. You know, like a guru sometimes. It can be like this.
Like a guru. Guru, yeah. Before we left the farm, we asked Armin what he thought about Helga's relationships with women who sought out Culture Without Borders for safety and support. He seemed to suggest that this is an understandable part of the creative life. That in order to do what Helga has done in the art world, one could not operate in a way much of society views as normal. If you start with a completely new thinking and working, it's the normal way. You must...
be a little bit non-conformist as an artist, as a curator. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
After our morning at the pig farm, we're now due back in Essen, at the studio of Anna Berlet, who runs the art program in the prison where Helga was held. Hello. Hi, I'm Bijan, and that's Mac. Hello. Welcome, come on in. Thank you. Anna's studio is in an alley behind a residential block of houses. It looks like a converted garage with exposed beams, two skylights, and white walls.
The stone floor is cool, and Anna has a wood stove roaring. It's beautiful. A bright orange plastic square is hung on one of the walls. On another, there's a text-based piece that, in hot pink lettering, reads, Fragilis gleich gewicht. Fragile equal weight. Another work in progress says in English, The art market is a bitch. Anna tells us that after Helga got out of the Essen prison, she remained friends with him.
And soon, they began talking about starting an ambitious project together. What turned into Culture Without Borders. He often visited me here in my studio and we painted together. And we...
created a common goal to establish an art association which where people with war experience and refugees and artists all over can come to work. And we founded this association and cast because he had still a lot of friends and a big network. This is "Culture Without Borders".
I worked there, but he wanted that I join the group and live there with them. And this I didn't want at all. So, no, I, yes, I left the group, but I'm still in the association, but not in the inner circle of the association because
I have different tools and means to make my artwork. We had some trouble when I told him that I won't stay in this association and I want to do my own business. So we are a little competitive. Anna says that she and Helga have fundamentally different outlooks on the roles of art and of the artist. It was easy for me.
When he came here to paint in my studio, this was different. But after a while, he met his friends and business partners and things. And this is not how I go to make art. For me, it's not the main important point to make money.
But he has to regain reputation. His crash was so immense. And he often told me he is a pirate captain or an eagle finding a new shore. But I didn't want to be on this pirate ship.
And I still do not want to be on the pirate ship. It's hard to identify in the moment, but I have the sense that Ana is holding something back. Do you trust Telka? He always can trust me, but I'm not sure if I trust him. I try to trust him. Does that mean you're not sure if you consider him a friend now, or...?
What is friendship? I don't know. So he's a friend. He's really a friend and we talk often to each other. But the question is how to trust. I don't know. Back in Byrdie, heading toward our Dusseldorf hotel, it's twilight and the sky is heavy with coming rain. Mac and I aren't sure what to make of Anna's equivocating on questions about trust and friendship where Helga is concerned. It's weird.
As we left her studio, she was worried that she had said too much. And she's not the only one burdened by the thought of discussing Helga. The day before, Helga's ex-wife Dorothy and their daughter Lily had texted to say they would love to speak with us about their lives with Helga. But then, this morning, another text came in from Dorothy. She and Lily had had a change of heart and now didn't want to talk. Again, weird.
It was hard to understand why Anna, Dorothy, and Lily were so spooked by the harmless-seeming guy we met on the island. I remember feeling a little on edge, sure, but this was something different, and it made me wonder, what damage was he capable of doing, or had done? These people are Helga's friends and family. Shouldn't they feel secure speaking their minds about him? I was thinking about all this on the Autobahn when Mac's cell phone rang. Helga? Yes?
Hi, how are you? Everything okay? Mostly, yeah. I have one thing that's not really great is yesterday, you know, I was in touch with... What? Yes, what happened? Yesterday I was in touch with both Lily and Dorothy and they said they would be happy to talk with us tonight and...
Then this morning, Dorothy texted and said she doesn't want to... She basically said whenever she says anything critical, that you are very angry and treat her badly. That she told you? Amazing. I was angry with her a few weeks ago when she...
She mentioned something to a very close friend of mine and he phoned me and said, "Hey, I'm very angry about Dorothy this and this." So I texted her a few weeks ago that I'm disappointed and I don't like that she tells something like this.
It was a critical thing from her concerning my work about artists with artists. And she told me he's only working with second class artists and not with the first class artists anymore. And she was, you know, like this. And honestly, I was so angry about it because she knows exactly
But isn't it...
Isn't it possible she wasn't saying that to hurt you, but just, you know, it's her version of radical honesty, right? She's just saying what she thinks is true. Yeah, but it's not true. The point is, it's not true. Because I told you, I wrote this lesson. Do you think this, you know, this, you know, we hate the big culture, you saw, I'm sure you saw this huge culture. This is the best culture in France who gave me this culture.
I think it has also to do something with jealousy from her. And I don't know, it's very special, you know, it's emotion always. But I can, if you want, I can write her. I don't mind if, that I like her critical position, if it's critical and not mean. I can write her something, if you want. I mean, yeah, you want to send it to me and I can forward it to her?
Yeah, sure, why not? If that's not clear, Helga just offered to write a note to Dorothy, asking her to reconsider speaking with Mac and me. And then the conversation turned to our meeting with Anna. She told me she was... You were asking her a few times why she didn't continue to work. You know, in our... In the cultural thought process. You have done this, no? And she was...
Helga, just now in this conversation,
I'm going to stop the tape here.
Because Helga is about to tell us something personal about his past, and I don't think it's best for the people involved to include it in this story. Mac and I discussed whether or not to keep what Helga said in. We were conflicted. In some ways, we felt we needed to include it. Here's why. What Helga told us represents a profound example of why Anna and others aren't sure if they can trust him.
And the way he said it, so casually, knowing that we're in the middle of reporting a story on him, felt revealing of his character. But ultimately, we decided not to include that part of the conversation. It had the potential to cause too many people too much pain. Our decision became clearer after we returned to New York and had a follow-up call with Anna. On that call, we told her what Helga had told us. She said she wished he hadn't said anything. I want to have him as a friend.
This idea, that Helga is what could generously be called mercurial, echoed something Manuel Graf had told us when we visited Culture Without Borders. I think it's...
It's impossible to really know him. He's deep. He has lots of sides. He has lots of sides. And the people closest to him already know it's important to stay on his good one. It's a lesson Mac and I are just starting to learn. On the next episode of Chameleon. So the situation is that we decided I'm not talking anymore.
about Babette and that's
be everything like it was. Helga responds to a new threat. Whenever somebody dares to say just a little bit the truth or criticize him, he's insulted and he gets very, very unpleasant. And I think it's very easy for your reputation to be corrupted in such a small space. And plays all the angles on what could be his biggest deal yet. When you're here and it's so peaceful and quiet, do you miss the excitement of the deals, of the big deals? No. No.
You don't? No. But honestly, this is out of record. Yeah. It's still recording. It's still on. That's next time on Chameleon Gallery of Lies. Unlock all episodes of Chameleon Gallery of Lies ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel.
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Gallery of Lies is hosted by me, Bijan Stephen. It's reported by me, Henry Lavoie, and Mac Montandon. And produced by me and Henry Lavoie. Mac Montandon is our executive producer. This episode was written by Mac Montandon. Our story editors are Emily Martinez and Matt Scher. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Garrett Tiedemann. Recording by Iwen Lai-Tremuen.
Our theme song is Wonder Bar by Dina Summer, Kalipo, and Local Suicide. Our fact-checking is by Mary Mathis, translating and interpreting by Bino Mushtagi, archival research by Vanessa Christophers Trinks, and additional field production by Jonas Voigt. A special thanks to Emma Simonoff, Valentina Delicia, and our operations team, Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scherer.
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