
Nico Helminger (born 1953) is a
Luxembourg
Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France on the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembour ...
ish author who has written poetry, novels, plays and libretti for operas. In 2008, he was awarded the
Batty Weber Prize for his literary work.
["Helminger, Guy", ''Luxemburger Lexikon'', Editions Guy Binsfeld, Luxembourg, 2006. ]["Nico Helminger"]
, ''Centre national de littérature''. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
Biography
Born on 1 July 1953 in
Differdange
Differdange (; or locally ; ) is a Communes of Luxembourg, commune with List of towns in Luxembourg, town status in south-western Luxembourg, west from the Luxembourg City, country's capital. It lies near the borders with Belgium and France an ...
, he is the elder brother of the author
Guy Helminger
Guy Helminger (born 1963) is a Luxembourgish author who has written a number of successful novels and plays in German.
Biography
Guy Helminger, the younger brother of author Nico Helminger, was born on 20 January 1963 in Esch-sur-Alzette in sout ...
. After graduating from high school in 1972, Helminger went on to study German,
Romance linguistics
Romance may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
** Romantic orientation, the classification of the sex or gender with which a pe ...
and drama in Luxembourg,
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken (; Rhenish Franconian: ''Sabrigge'' ; ; ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of cities and towns in Germany, city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken has 181,959 inhabitants and is Saarland's administrative, commerci ...
,
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
and
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. In 1980, he went to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
where he taught German and history at secondary school. From 1984, he became an independent writer working in
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
,
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...
, Paris and Luxemburg, finally settling in
Esch-sur-Alzette
Esch-sur-Alzette (, ; ; or ''Esch an der Alzig'') is a city in Luxembourg and the country's List of communes of Luxembourg by population, second-most populous commune, with a population of 36,625 inhabitants, . It lies in the south-west of the ...
in 1999.
[
Helminger has written socially critical plays such as ''Miss Minett und de schantchen'' in which he brings out the psychological and social problems suffered in the industrial south-western area of Luxembourg. Other works like ''Kitsch, Läschten eens käe liewen'', and ''Kurzgeschichten'' address domestic violence and loss of hope and purpose as symptoms of an inhuman, materialistic society. He ascribes these trends to the repression of political and social issues as a result of the ]Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the power of the church and the media. In his later works (''In eigener säure, Grenzgang'') he introduces increasingly poetic, intertextual and multilingual elements.[
]
References
External links
Nico Helminger at CNL with full bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Helminger, Nico
Luxembourgian writers
1953 births
Living people
Luxembourgian poets
Luxembourgian novelists
People from Differdange
People from Esch-sur-Alzette
International Writing Program alumni