First performances ("Aktions") with children. At first in his studio and later in the streets of Vienna.
In his essay "The Divided Self", art-historian Peter Gorsen states: "As shown by his many actions with children in public, the group portrait with children has become a permanent subject for Helnwein. His commitment to the rights of children has nothing to do with "infantomania", as manifested in a socially isolated "children's culture", in a commercialized "children's media", in the child as a pedagogical subject, and in the ideological transfiguration of one's own childhood.

Helnwein must also be set apart from Viennese Actionism as he does not reduce the child's body to mere aesthetic material (as in the "material actions" of Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, and Otto Muehl), but instead endows it with a symbolic function in representing defenceless, sacrificed man. The sexualistic concept of the child in (Freud-influenced) "Viennese Actionism" is countered by the moralist and utopian Helnwein with the child as a sexless salvation figure. The tendency to a patriarchal transfiguration and idealization of an innocent, sacrificing child-man embracing children and artists as the sole creative interest group is the main feature distinguishing Helnwein's world of pictures from the pan-sexualism and libido anarchy of the Vienna action group of old." ...

1970 Prize of the Academy for Fine Art, Vienna (Meisterschul-Preis).

Works on a series of hyper-realistic paintings of wounded children..
Intensive research into the various forms of trivial aesthetics such as comics, advertising, and film; puts this experience into his work. Watercolor: "Unkeusches Kind" (Unchaste Child), "Peinlich" (Embarrassing), "Gemeines Kind" (Mean Child), "Der Eingriff" (Intrusion). First oil paintings: "Mutter, Du hier?" (Mother, Is It You?); "Führer, wir danken Dir!" (Führer, We Thank You!). ...

Aktion "Die Akademie brennt" (Academy Burning).
With two fellow students and several hired activists, Helnwein stages a rebellion at the Akademy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The trigger was the refusal of the professors to allow student representatives a say in the entrance examinations. The event is carefully planned and choreographed by Helnwein. Professors are locked in, doors are set a blaze, the building is filled with smoke, paint splattered on the walls, windows smashed and serious damage is done. Panic breakes out and Riot police moves in. The "student revolt at the Academy of Fine Arts " makes the headlines in the Austrian media. The next day Helnwein and his colleagues get picked up by custodians of the university and charged.
Hertha Firnberg, Austrian minister of art and science, declares their action to be political and all investigations and criminal proceedings are dropped. ...

Helnwein marries Ilse R.
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First one man show at Galerie Atrium, Vienna.
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First photographic self-portraits with bandages and surgical instruments.
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1969 to 1973 Helnwein studies painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
It is the same University where in 1907 and 1908, a young struggling artist by the name of Adolf Hitler was twice denied admission for art studies. ...

Helnwein begins to work on a series of hyper-realistic watercolor-paintings of bandaged and wounded children.
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Helnwein travels to Istanbul.
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1968 Walks with his friend Manfred Deix from Venice to Vienna over several days without eating or sleeping.
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With his own blood Helnwein paints a picture of Adolf Hitler ("Führer"). The Professors are discomposed and the school administration confiscates the painting.
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1966 First "Aktions" for small audiences.
Helnwein cuts his face and hands with razor blades, etching- and wood-engraving tools. First bandaging happenings. ...

1965 to 1969 Studies at the "Higher Federal Institution for Graphic Education and Experimentation" in Vienna .
("Höhere Bundes-Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Wien" ) ...

1960 - 1965 Helnwein tries different high-schools but has no idea what this is all about and fails completely.
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Strict Roman Catholic upbringing.
Kindergarten with nuns, becomes altar boy, goes to school with the "School-brothers", Jesuits... ...

1955 First year at school with the Roman Catholic "School-Brothers".
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1954 His father gives him one of the first German Disney comic-books.
And Helnwein has his Damascus experience:
"Opening my first Donald Duck comic book felt like seeing the daylight again for someone who has been trapped underground by a mine-disaster for many days. I squinted cautiously because my eyes hadn't gotten used to the dazzling, bright sun of Duckburg yet, and I greedily sucked the fresh breeze that came drifting over from Uncle Scrooge's money bin into my dusty lungs. I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which the people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who would forever change my life - a man who, as the Austrian poet H.C. Artmann put it, is the only person today that has something worthwhile saying: Donald Duck." ...

Helnwein spends his childhood going back and forth between depressed post-war Vienna and the farm of his grandparents in the countryside of rural Lower Austria.
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His father Joseph Helnwein works in the Austrian post administration, and his mother Margarethe is a housewife.
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