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I've recently been thinking about this old German fairy tale called Hans im Glück, or Hans in Luck. It was published in an 1812 book of Grimm's fairy tales.
In the story, Hans has been working hard on a farm for seven years to make money for his mom, who lives in another village. Finally, Hans satisfies his boss with his work, and he's given a gold nugget as payment. Hans sets off for home, bouncing along with the gold in his pocket. But soon, he grows tired of running. He spots a dude on a horse and trades the gold for the powerful animal. Hans climbs aboard and begins to ride.
This works out for a while until the horse proves to be a little wild and throws Hans off. Always something with this guy. Fortunately, a shepherd shows up right about then and offers to give Hans a cow in exchange for his horse. The prospect of milk and butter sounds good to Hans. He makes the deal. The cow, it turns out, is not so great at providing milk. In fact, it sucks.
No worries, though. Here comes a man with a goose. Wouldn't you know? And yeah, Hans trades the cow for the goose. And then he gets sick of the goose. I mean, who wouldn't, really? And he trades the goose for a grindstone, so he can make stuff for money and buy food or whatever for his mom. Thing is, the grindstone is heavy. Hard to schlep. Carrying it on his journey gives Hans an awful thirst. So he stops at a river for water. Bends down to drink.
Here, the grindstone slips from his grasp and drops into the river, sinking down, down, and down. Down to the silty bottom. Now, Hans has nothing. He once had a small fortune in gold, and now, Zippo. And the crazy part? This makes him happy. This is Hans' luck. He is literally unburdened, spiritually free. Hans feels like he's got it made.
These days, I can't seem to get good old Hans out of my mind, no matter how much I might want to. And you may think you know why I've been obsessing over Hans, but I'm willing to wager you don't. From Campside Media, in association with Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Bijan Stephen, and this is the finale of Chameleon Gallery of Lies. Episode 6 changes. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
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You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. While aspects of Helga's post-prison life certainly resemble his pre-prison life, in other ways, there are signs of change. Or, at least, a new calculation on Helga's part. For one thing, he has a fresh reticence when it comes to talking about his past. On a call in May, Helga sounds ready to move on. It helps me to come to an end of this period of living that
in this guilty and special situation. So for myself, I decided that I'm not, for the future, will talk in public about my case. And so I will let this go with the documentary and, of course, with this podcast. He even told us that he recently turned down an invitation to speak with the producers of yet another film on him.
Something that would have been impossible for me to imagine when I first met him on Lanzarote. I am tired. Tired of talking again and again and again and again. I just refused one documentary for a German railway station and said, no, sorry, too late. ♪
This turn towards discretion was made more urgent by the apparent pressure from Babette Albrecht's lawyer, Andreas Orban. Helga, you remember, told us that Orban instructed him to never speak of his client again. And, by the way, we emailed Orban to confirm Helga's account of all that and never heard back. But if Helga is motivated to keep quiet by what he views as Orban's threats, I can't say I blame him.
Babette's lawyer seems to have a history of going after people for what he would consider saying too much. It's a history Helga is intimately familiar with. That's because, just nine months after Helga was sentenced to jail in 2015, another Achenbach was dragged to court by Babette and Orban. That case centered on a book written by Helga's ex-wife Dorothy, a memoir called Everyone Knows My Laundry Now.
The book, which sold about 40,000 copies within a few weeks of publication and became a German bestseller, gets into Dorothy's marriage to Helga, his fraudulent behavior, and all the power players involved. While Babette is not named in the book, Orban argued that an heiress character, who is known as the widow and who dodges inheritance taxes, too closely resembled Babette.
The trial was a shocking denouement for two women the press described as former best friends. Once again, German media couldn't look away from the high society car crash. A piece in the German tabloid Bild wondered, is this the revenge of a billionaire housewife? Or is this simply about justice?
In the end, Babette received what she might consider justice. After the initial print run of Dorothy's book, subsequent editions of Everyone Knows My Laundry Now featured eight redacted sections, including one that had a line about the widow owing 18 million euros in inheritance tax.
All of this was surely on Helga's mind when he made the decision to acquiesce to Orban's demands. For him, it was a simple equation. Well-funded lawsuits that threaten his freedom are greater than being radically honest in the press. And besides, Helga told us on the May call, he doesn't really believe that if he fought Orban in court again, he'd get a fair shake. I don't trust so much the German court. Money makes the world go round. What do you mean by that? In terms of the court? Yeah.
I don't know. You must know. I mean, it's a question of who has the power. Where Helge can seem myopic when it comes to taking stock of how his behavior impacts those around him, he can also be acutely attuned to the transactional nature of relationships in the art world. His work, after all, has so often revolved around who he knows and what that person can give him.
He said as much to us on a phone call when he told us that he's not looking for new clients, but they find him anyway. I'm not running after clients, so the client has to come to me. This is sometimes a point for people that they think, OK, he knows the whole market since 40 years. And of course, I mean, I placed in my life maybe 150, 200 Gerhard Richter paintings, and I was placing a lot of other artists.
So I know, of course, where the pieces are. He knows where the pieces are and can't stop himself from going after them. Right now, Helge is working on a deal someone's brought him. He's been at it for years, in fact, since just after his release from prison. It's part of a huge collection. Through a quite good friend, I was asked to help to place this collection. And it's, of course, a...
Helge says the collection he's talking about belongs to a wealthy family he didn't want to name. It features works by Pablo Picasso between 1895 and 1960.
Helga emailed a document of the inventory that listed 19 paintings and drawings. Many of the works are portraits of women. The materials used are predominantly oil on canvas and charcoal on paper. We asked Martha Hollander, a professor of art history at Hofstra University, to take a look at the thumbnail images Helga had sent us. We were curious to know if there was anything exceptional about the collection.
Hollander told us it was hard to tell much from the small photos, apart from the fact that they definitely looked like genuine Picassos. Picasso is probably the one modern artist that everybody has heard of, even more than Van Gogh. Because, of course, Van Gogh did not live into the 20th century. Picasso was sort of it. So everybody's heard of Picasso. And everybody probably knows like three or four things about Picasso.
Things like, he might have invented cubism, and he definitely behaved very badly with many of the women in his life.
Near the end of my conversation with Hollander, she said something else about Picasso that caught my attention. He worked unbelievably hard all the time and was constantly coming up with new and fresh and inventive stuff. And I guess that's probably the most useful and good thing to know about him, regardless of what anybody, regardless of what else is true of him. And people have strong opinions about him.
If I didn't know that she was talking about Pablo Picasso, it would be easy to think that Hollander was assessing Helga Achenbach. Like Picasso, it's hard to look past Helga's treatment of the women in his life. And people also have strong opinions of Helga. And no matter how you feel about the guy, there's no denying that Helga works hard, tries to come up with new ideas, new ways of doing things. He's now past retirement age, and there is no slowdown in sight for him.
He's still constantly taking meetings and is deeply involved with Culture Without Borders. Hell, he's even working hard on his own paintings, though they will never, in his own words, be important pieces. All of which makes me think that if this is indeed Helga's last big deal, moving Picassos, it would be like a fairytale ending for him. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
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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. 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 Robbie. I'm probably 30.
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.
From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. 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. For years, Helga has been trying to find a buyer for the Picassos. He says that in 2021, he was close. But then, a sudden tragedy. One very...
Helga later confirmed that the billionaire in question was Petr Kellner, who Forbes once considered the richest person in the Czech Republic.
Kellner was something of a Czech Murdoch, initially making his fortune with his investment fund before leaping into the insurance business and then buying a big European broadcast network. Kellner was on a heli-skiing trip in Alaska when the helicopter carrying him and four others crashed.
Since Kellner's death, Helge has been trying to unload the Picassos for the unnamed family. And on a call in late spring, he told us he thinks he may soon have a deal. So it's really one very, very wealthy European billionaire. He's a man, quite old, 75 years old, and he thinks maybe to buy this collection and sell
If this all sounds very familiar to you, yeah, there's a good reason for that. And if you're wondering if this very old, very billionaire European fella has reservations about working with Helga,
Well, yeah, that's a good question. We asked if any of Helga's new clients ever bring up the whole Albrecht situation. I remember one German billionaire came to me and said, Mr. Achenbach, you may be wondering that I'm coming to you, but I know that you have done this thing with Mr. Albrecht and you will not be so stupid to take more than we decided together what you can take.
and he that was his opinion and i know that you know the market quite well so why should i not ask you and tell you help me so i'm a pain i work between figuration and abstraction it seems like an elevator speech but i think it's firmly in between these two like extremities we're back at that richter show in late winter the place where this story started i'm talking to an artist named cedric chisholm
I didn't know who he was before we spoke, but when I saw him across a gallery room, it seemed incredibly obvious that he was an artist. I can't quite remember what he was wearing, but I think it was overalls. I do, however, distinctly remember that they were splattered with paint. We got to talking, and then Cedric took out his phone and showed me some of his own work. This one is literally based on the Founding Fathers. It seems like they're melting. They're far more eroded.
I mean, they're kind of speculative paintings. They're apocalyptic. I'm just trying to get to a certain condition of the paint where figuration meets abstraction. While Cedric and I are talking, the whole swirl and scrum of the Richter show is going on all around us. Art industry players are circling, hunting. Civilians are discussing the work and trying to figure out what these abstract pieces mean. It's loud and hot and a little chaotic. But Cedric is focused. His love for art, for the paintings themselves, is palpable.
I ask what brought him to the opening. I'm a fan of Richter, too. These paintings, I think they have a kind of affect to it specifically because we're in New York, you know. It's like the disorganization of it. It feels appropriate. Exactly. When I listen back on this conversation now, after spending so much time in one corner of the art world, I hear something I never heard in my conversations on Lanzarote or in Dusseldorf, Essen, and Karst.
It's pure enthusiasm, excitement about the work, and love. So much love. For the act of painting, sure, but also love for the idea that art is worth something beyond its financial value. That's something I've never heard from Helga, even when he's talking about his own paintings. It would be easy to dismiss Cedric's passion as a purely cultural thing. Germans do have a reputation for being emotionally distant, whether that's earned or not.
Americans, on the other hand, are notoriously optimistic, perhaps naive, robust of spirit. But I don't think it comes down to just a difference of nationality. Listening to that conversation, I feel transported a million miles away from the world of blue-chip acquisitions, of powerfully connected dealers, of billionaire collectors, of bitter lawsuits. This, I realize, is where it all starts: a clever young artist and his dreams. It's that simple.
Cedric is already represented by a gallery. You can buy his work if you'd like. But however he's done it, on this particular night, in this particular gallery, surrounded by work from this particular artist, it feels like he hasn't been corrupted. At least, not in the way that Helga's corrupted. You actually start looking at the painting in terms of application of material. I'm not trying to create an illusion, so to speak. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
In the first episode, I mentioned that I was reporting this story with Mac. We've been in it together this whole time. But there's one thing I haven't really mentioned yet. And that's how we felt about our time on Lanzarote. And, by extension, about Helga himself. I have to come clean. I've always felt skeptical of him. Helga's a self-described narcissist, a person who's constantly narrativizing and mythologizing his own life to you.
I've never taken well to that kind of person. The kind of person who you realize is trying to sway you to their side for their own purposes. Whatever those are, big or small, der Illusionist-sized or just friendship-sized. I don't like feeling used. Mack, on the other hand, had a slightly different reaction. He left Lanza Rotate charmed. Mostly, I think, as a journalist. Here was a man who had a crazy story that we were going to get to tell. But Mack told me it's a little bit personal, too.
Helga's very good at selling an extremely romantic vision of life. You want to believe you're the person he says he sees in you. Behind the scenes, this is stuff Mac and I have been chewing on for months across different airports and different time zones. That divergence in our feelings about Helga mirrors the way everyone else seems to react to him. Either they're like Mac, charmed, maybe a little bit more than they want to be, or they're like me and feel vaguely offended at the idea that we might be bought by flattery.
Meanwhile, people who know him a little better, like Anna Burlett, are of two minds. It's hard to trust him because, to him, your feelings might be instrumental, just another tool to use and then discard. After we returned from our trip to see Helga on his Canary Island, he stayed in touch. Like, really in touch.
Some weeks he would WhatsApp Mac nearly daily with updates about his life, his work, Aisha, Culture Without Borders. And he would call, too, just to talk, to check in, see how the podcast was going.
When Mac recounted these calls to me, or when I listened to the tape, it seemed fairly clear that Helga wasn't just looking for friendly banter. He also wanted, as far as I could tell, to shape the narrative, to make it more self-serving. To make sure we were telling the story, his story, the way he thought it should be told. No.
No, but, Meg, what I don't like is, and this is my honest talking to you, you know, I give you all my connections and what I need is, I need from you the serious...
let's say, the serious way. And I don't like to manipulate, of course, because I don't see it as a need because I'm like I am now. And of course, you know, I have done a huge mistake in my life and I'm trying to
to, let's say, survive with this mistake. He'd done the same thing with his books, one before prison and one after, sculpting his arc from youthful genius innovator to besieged product of his environment. And he'd done it, to some extent, with Birgit Schulz's documentary, Der Illusionist, which presents a largely sympathetic profile of Helga. When we set out to tell the story, we tried to escape a similar fate.
But between the legal threats, the fact that many people once close to Helga are no longer alive, his family's understandable unwillingness to open up old wounds, and the art world stonewalling on all things Helga, it's tough to say if we succeeded. What I can say is we've been radically honest the entire time. Honestly, at this point, I think you probably know him just about as well as I do.
Despite our different reactions to Helga himself, Mac and I are united in our desire to try to understand this enigmatic man. And even when this story ends, something tells me we'll both keep looking for more revealing clues. Toward the end of one of Mac's last calls with Helga, he asked Mac about that German fairy tale I was telling you about earlier. You know the story about Hans and Gluck? Mac did not.
So Helga told him his version of the story. Helga gets paid after his working life. He gets a big piece of gold, a very big piece of gold. He leaves the job and he goes with this gold out of his job. And while he walks home, he meets a guy who wants to change with him. And so he gives him the gold against the horse.
And then the horse jumps away. Then he gets a cow and then later on he gets this big piece of stone, a heavy stone, and he's carrying the heavy stone. And then at the end, the heavy stone falls into the water. And then he has nothing in his hand, but he has his freedom.
It doesn't take much deconstructing of the text to understand that Helge sees himself as Hans. Except, in Helge's case, there were no big pieces of gold or horses or cows or heavy stones. In his case, there were millions of euros and several houses and dozens of vintage classic cars. And then there was nothing. The thing is, in this story, I believe Helge is more like the other people than he is like Hans. He's more like the predators preying on wide-eyed rubes than the innocent protagonist.
He did take advantage of Bertolt Albrecht and Christian Berenger. He's the kind of person who might have persuaded Hans to overpay for a cow that may or may not provide a satisfying glass of milk. For Helga to compare himself to Hans is disingenuous, because in the story Hans is blameless. And yet Helga clearly identifies with Hans and is drawn to the idea that only by ridding oneself of material possessions can one be truly free.
Over email, Helga told us that if the deal works out, he'll give up all the money from the sale of those Picassos to be free of the Albrechts. He wrote, quote, Of course Helga would say that. It would be a very satisfying ending to his story. And who can blame him? Who doesn't want to mythologize their life?
to make our mistakes not just dumb blunders, but epic failures along a hero's journey. We all want our lives to resemble stories that are written down and kept in an old book that's never forgotten. That provides lessons for those that come after us. A legacy. We all want that. But some of us are better at telling ourselves stories that may or may not be true.
even if our real lives don't at all resemble a fairy tale. I want to trust Helga. To trust that this is how he genuinely feels. I want to trust him, but I'm not sure I can.
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 Ewen Lai-Tremuwen.
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 Gregoriotis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scherer. If you enjoyed Chameleon, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.