A statuesque blonde whose otherworldly voice inspired a generation to come, Nico embodied the bohemian spirit of the distant past, a Romantic heroine whose greatest regret, she admitted in 1981, was that, “I was born a woman and not a man.” Hers was a tragedy that haunted her soul, one forged in the horrors of war that ravaged her from within, destroying her redolent beauty while revealing itself through song.
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Born Christa Päffgen in Cologne, Germany, in 1938, Nico spent her formative years in shelters while the British dropped bombs overhead, bearing witness to the Soviet conquest of German troops and losing her father to either a concentration camp or shellshock following the war. Bearing a passport stamped “ohne festen Wohnsitz” (no fixed address), Nico traveled between Germany, France, and Italy, picking up seven languages along the way.
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German fashion photographer Herbert Tobias discovered Nico, then 16, modeling in a KaDeWe fashion show in Berlin, fell madly in love, and bestowed upon her the legendary one-word name. “Modeling is such a dull job,” Nico later told The New York Times, indicating her deeper desire for something more. After starring in a few television commercials, Nico landed small roles in a couple of films before receiving an invitation to the set of La Dolce Vita in 1959. Invariably, the leggy libertine caught the eye of Federico Fellini who gave her a minor role in the film as herself, recognizing a diva in the making.
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