Hans G. Helms

Hans G Helms (8 June 1932 – 11 March 2012) was a German experimental writer, composer, and social and economic analyst and critic. Life Helms was born in Teterow into a Jewish family, who were able to escape the Holocaust by using falsified papers. He spent his childhood and youth in Teterow and Berlin. He received his first musical education whilst young, learning the piano and theory from an immigrant from Byelorussia. During the Nazi era he became acquainted with Swing and jazz from secretly listening to “enemy transmitters”. In the years immediately after World War II, Helms studied tenor saxophone with a member of the US army and appeared from 1950 until 1952 in Sweden as a jazz musician. He played with, amongst others, Charlie Parker and Gene Krupa, and also in 1953 in Vienna with Hans Koller. As well as being preoccupied with new music (Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Alban Berg and the Second Viennese School) Helms, working at the Viennese radio station (RWR), created with, amongst others, Ingeborg Bachmann, the radio genre . In Göttingen, where he lived from 1953 onwards, Helms first made the acquaintance of the philosopher and sociologist Helmuth Plessner, then later with The