Chapter 1 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

Margarete ‘Grete’ Berta Schulz was born on 10 January 1910 in Hardenberg, an area of Germany that is now part of Poland. She was the third of eight children, small in stature, with the same high cheekbones and sultry lips that would bring her daughter global fame. Grete met Hermann Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Päffgen in Berlin. They fell in love. From the very tall Willi Nico would inherit her height, wide-set grey eyes and distinctive bone structure. But there were some major problems: Willi was the rebellious son of a well-heeled, well-known Catholic family, prominent for owning a major brewery in Cologne; Grete was a Protestant from a humble background – and married.

Grete’s first husband was painter Rodolf Paul Emil Schulz. Rodolf treated Grete very well, and the two seemed happy. However, upon meeting Willi, Grete became completely besotted. Following her heart instead of rationality, she left her devoted spouse in order to run away with Willi to his home town of Cologne.

The mystery of Nico’s actual date and place of birth has been woven into her myth, as if to prove the consistency of inconsistency, even from the womb, of a life patchworked with half-truths and fabrications. It has been purported that she was born in Cologne in 1938 or 1942, Budapest in 1943 or 1944, Berlin in 1943, Cologne in 1942 or Poland in 1938. Not only the date but also the surname are inconsistent across various texts, noted as being ‘18 October’, ‘15 March’, ‘… Pafgens, or maybe Pfaffen’. By actually tracking down the formal German documents Nico’s true origins have now been clearly established.

From as early as 1880, German citizens had to fill out a Meldekarte, a personal registration card documenting a variety of events, includ­ing marriage, death, changes of address and divorce. It also records individual characteristics, such as religion and occupation, and includes the name of the head of the household. The birth certifi­cate – or Geburtsurkunde – is always based on the information that is written on the Meldekarten of the parents. The personnel in the registry office look at the Personenstandregister – birth registrations from the Meldekarten – and then write the certificate. While there have been numerous birth dates and places given in various press pieces, this registry provides an incontestable document showing when and where Nico arrived. The third entry on Margarete Berta Schulz’s card states: ‘Born on October 16 1938 at 17.30h in Köln-Lindenthal, Kerpenerstraße 32 a girl. The child was given the name Christa.’ Kerpenerstrasse, in Köln-Lindenthal, is in Cologne.

The registry documents contain a wealth of information about Nico’s family during her early years. Nico being born out of wedlock has been a long-standing part of her ‘history’, her illegitimacy per­petuated by repeated retellings across various biographies. However, this is not entirely accurate. As of 8 October 1937, Grete is listed on her Meldekarte as being legally divorced from her first husband, Rodolf. The form marks a difference between children born in and out of wedlock. If the parents are married, the date of their wedding is included on the form. If the mother is without a spouse at the time of the child’s arrival, only her date of birth is included. On Nico’s birth certificate Grete’s nuptials with Rodolf are listed as ‘the marriage of the parents on May 17, 1933 in Berlin, registry office B lin XIII B (or 13), Nr. 437’ – though he is not her birth father. Thus, Nico formally started life as Christa Schulz. Further down the Meldekarte, however, this line is crossed out – most likely a ref­erence to the dissolved Schulz/Schulz union. There is no further mention of Christa in relation to Rodolf Schulz.

Another addendum on the birth certificate from April 1939 clearly substantiates Nico’s place on the Päffgen family tree. It states that Margarete Berta Schulz married the clerk Hermann Wilhelm Päffgen on 30 December 1938. Due to an order of a local court in Cologne, from March 1939, the child was now considered ehelich, meaning ‘born within the marriage’. Thanks to this declaration, Nico became officially, legitimately Päffgen. Grete’s younger sister Helma Wolff remembers that this news was not welcomed by Willi’s family. They were horrified by the young man’s nuptials, even more so when they heard of the arrival of an infant daughter. Else Päffgen, Willi’s sister (Christa’s aunt), insisted that the newborn was not her brother’s. The Päffgen coterie pressured the new groom to annul the marriage, arguing that Grete was surely only interested in getting her hands on the family’s money. Grete and Willi’s divorce is listed on legal documents as going through on 21 May 1941.

Despite the Päffgens’ attempts to distance themselves from Nico, she was, according to the formal German documents, legally Willi’s daughter. However, the idea of displacement and rejection was very real for Nico, her trajectory of ‘ohne feste Adresse’ – ‘without a fixed address’, be that place, family ties or nationality – seeming to have been set in motion from the earliest moments of her life.