Monika Helfer (1947 – 2026)

Their Story

Monika Helfer was born on October 18, 1947 in Au, Austria. Over more than five decades, she shaped Austrian literature with novels, stories, plays, radio dramas, and children's books. Her work often explored difficult family relationships with a special focus on the child's perspective. She became known to a wide readership with the 2020 novel "Die Bagage," which tells the story of her grandparents and their children. This became a bestseller and was followed by two more autofictional works completing a family trilogy: "Vati" (2021), shortlisted for the German Book Prize, which centers on her father and examines her childhood and relationships with her siblings, and "Löwenherz" (2022), which processes the life and early death of her brother Richard. Helfer received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2016, the Solothurner Literaturpreis in 2020, and the Schubart-Literaturpreis in 2021, and was nominated twice for the German Book Prize in 2017 and 2021. In January 2026, she received the Carl-Zuckmayer-Medaille from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate for her contributions to the German language. She grew up in Vorarlberg and had four children, two with writer Michael Köhlmeier, whom she married in 1981. She died on August 2, 2026, unexpectedly as a result of a fall.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monika_Helfer