{"id":659,"date":"2016-10-02T02:58:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-02T02:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2016\/10\/02\/nicos-senseless-death\/"},"modified":"2019-10-09T21:48:45","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T21:48:45","slug":"nicos-senseless-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=659","title":{"rendered":"Nico’s Senseless Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"nico\"What do you think when you hear of a 49-year-old singer-songwriter, fashion model and actress who was famous throughout the world, who fell off her bike, hit her head, passed out and was taken to an emergency room where she was diagnosed as having heat stroke and then died from a brain hemorrhage that can usually be cured by surgery to remove the extra blood around the brain?<\/div>\n
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Chaotic Early Years<\/strong><\/div>\n
Christa Paffgen, one of the most fascinating entertainers of the 1960s, was born \u00a0in 1938 in Cologne, Germany to a Yugoslavian father and a Spanish mother. Her early life was nothing but trauma. In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland to start World War II. \u00a0Her father was conscripted onto the German army, suffered severe brain damage and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution. \u00a0In 1941, her mother and grandfather moved to the Spreewald forest near Berlin to get away from the bombing of Cologne. \u00a0When the war ended, her mother took her to live in occupied Berlin where they were exposed to brutal treatment by Russian troops and she was raped by an American soldier. \u00a0 At age 13, lack of finances forced her to \u00a0leave school and work as a seamstress, yet her bright mind allowed her eventually to learn to speak seven languages fluently and she taught herself to sing and play the harmonium. \u00a0 By age 14 she was 5′ 10″ and gorgeous, and was hired by Berlin’s most exclusive department store to sell lingerie. \u00a0She wanted to be a model or an actress, so every day she stood outside the store talking to people who passed by, waiting to be “discovered.” \u00a0 Sure enough, one day she struck up a conversation with a German couturier named Ostergaard who started her on a modeling career.<\/div>\n
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She began to model for photographer Herbert Tobias after they met at a fashion show. \u00a0He thought she should have a more distinctive name, so they chose Nico, after a friend of his. \u00a0She moved to Paris where she worked for Vogue, Elle and the other major fashion magazines, and then went to New York to continue her modeling career and to study acting. \u00a0After appearing in several TV commercials, she got small parts in two movies:\u00a0La Tempesta<\/em> and For the First Time<\/em>, which starred Mario Lanza. \u00a0 At age 21, she showed up at the filming of La Dolce Vita<\/em> where the famous director, Federico Fellini, took one look at her standing on the sidelines, talked to her and offered her a role in the film.<\/div>\n
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