Biography
Helga Piur was born May 24, 1939, in Berlin, as the youngest of six children. When she was five years old, her mother died; Helga then grew up with her father"s sister and her husband. After joining the Rundfunk-Kinderchor at the age of twelve, she decided to become a singer – an intention that she expanded to acting after attending commercial school and subsequently working as a secretary for Dietz publishing house at the age of 17.
After her first applications for drama schools were rejected, Piur took acting lessons with the actor Eduard von Winterstein who put her in contact with lecturers for literary history, speech training, and physical education besides her work at the publishing house. After Winterstein mentioned his pupil in the youth magazine "Neues Leben", Helga Piur attracted the attention of GDR television and was offered a contract. The 20-year old actress made her debut in TV shows for children and teenagers such as "Bahnhof Puppenstadt" or "Treff mit Petra". From the early 1960s on, DEFA also employed her for several films, including the love story "Wo der Zug nicht lange hält" (1960) and the musical "Der Dieb von San Marengo" (1963).
During filming, she met the actor Gert Andreae, a cast member of Deutsches Theater who was eleven years older than her. After their daughter Beatrice was born, Piur again focused on her acting career. However, Andreae developed cancer in 1970 and the actress cancelled her television contract. Furthermore, Piur took another two-year break from acting after Andreae"s death.
From 1972 on, she was again seen in numerous farce stories and comedies besides her work for the radio and as a dubbing voice. Piur, for instance, starred as daughter-in-law Elfi in the TV series "Dolles Familienalbum". While filming, she met her second husband, the director Günther Stahnke. Piur then expanded her acting repertoire with serious characters with her performances in "Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land" (1976) or "Marta, Marta" (1979). From 1985 on, she finally became a public idol with her role as dental assistant Victoria Happmeyer (nicknamed "Häppchen") alongside Alfred Struwe in the successful TV series "Zahn um Zahn", the first long-term TV series of GDR television.
Piur won two "Goldener Lorbeer" and two "Silberner Lorbeer" for her acting performances. Furthermore, she was voted "most popular person on TV" twice, in 1986 and in 1987, by the viewers of GDR television. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the career of Helga Piur who had been a permanent cast member of DFF, the GDR television, came to a halt. However, she tours Germany with different programs since 2002. To date, her tours include reading performances of her autobiography "Ein Häppchen von mir" that was published in March 2009.