- "As a child I would draw my own maps and dig for treasures in the forest outside our estate. It was my escape. Then a polio epidemic spread through the area. Months I spent in bed, dreaming terrible dreams while my leg withered and died. Do you think I broke down and cried over this? Of course I did. Crying is a human behavior. Giving up, however, is for degenerates. I never gave up. I took control of my fate. Are you in control of your fate, Franz?"
- ―Helga having a conversation with an under-cover Blazkowicz[src]
Obersturmbannführer Helga von Schabbs is the main antagonist of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. As the direct descendant of King Otto I, the Holy Roman Emperor, she became fascinated with her heritage and gained an insatiable desire to learn the secrets hidden in Wulfburg. She was handpicked by Wilhelm Strasse to lead the SS Paranormal Division and kept the location of his secret base at her ancestral home of Castle Wolfenstein, which prompts B.J. Blaszkowicz's mission to infiltrate it.
History[]
Born in 1908, the 37 year old Helga was a descendant of German nobility, straight from King Otto I. Her youth was spent at the family estate, playing in the forests and pretending to go on incredible adventures. All of this ended when she contracted polio at 7, leaving her with a disabled left leg. Her mother's negligence and cold emotional distance during this traumatic time left deep scars inside Helga, compounded later by her father, Gregory von Schabb's suicide in 1917 after wasting the family's fortune. Helga herself found him dead in the kitchen, with a gunshot wound to the head. Her mother remarried a year later, with a man whom Helga disliked. Helga reacted by immersing herself in studying early Germanic history, slowly gravitating towards Romanticism and nationalism. The situation at home deteriorated, After a devastating row with her stepfather, she manipulated her younger brother into murdering him devastating her mother. Later that same year she left home to study history at the University of Vienna. Toward the end of her studies, her heartbroken mother died suddenly, and she was left with a huge inheritance and the keys to Castle Wolfenstein. In 1934, she started an enterprise of treasure hunting and occult research. She became a tomb raider, traveling all over the world, to places like Egypt, South America, India, and Tanganyika. She was a wine connoisseur and has a collection of finely aged wines in the cellar of the Wolfenstein keep.[1] Much of these developments was because of her late father, who inspired her to love history, with one of her most cherished memories being the trip to the National Museum of History in Berlin, a trip that she described was like touching history.[2]
General Deathshead, who quickly saw she could be a great asset to the Nazi party, recruited her over a bottle of wine in the desert outside of Cairo. She became the leader of the SS Paranormal Division, and their resources greatly increased her ability to travel and secure new assets for her collections - and also brought her in contact with future Allied operatives, like Richard Wesley. During her pre-War travels, von Schabbs discovered the Istambul parchments, which became critical in the creation of General Deathshead war machines. Originally called Parchments from Constantinople, presumably created by the Da'at Yichud, they were used by King Otto I and abbot Konrad to create their war beasts and the Monstrosity.[3]
Her personal life was far less successful than her professional one: She started a relationship with Reinhold, but it ended due to him not expressing love to her. The two stayed in touch and he wanted to meet her in Florence, but wrote him a letter stating her findings were too important, and that she would contact him soon. In the meantime, she began to have a another relationship with one of her officers, Karl.[4]
Interactions[]
The Old Blood[]
SS-Obersturmbannführer Helga von Schabbs is the owner and commanding officer of Castle Wolfenstein. Her second-in-command is Rudi Jäger. Plot wise, she possesses the folder that contains the secret location of Deathshead's compound, from which the German army has gained so much of its technological advantages.
During the mission to steal Helga's folder from Castle Wolfenstein, Richard Wesley tells Blazkowicz about her and throughout the first half of the game B.J. encounters many documents wrote by Helga.
Blazkowicz first encounters her when he tries to discretely take the folder from her in a tavern by posing as a waiter, Helga quickly notices the missing folder and prevents him from leaving the room. When she calls him back to her she asks for his name, to which B.J. uses his fake identity as 'Franz'. Noting his accent, she forces him to drink what he's served her, revealing that the ignorant B.J. had given her wine that had gone off. She then stabs him in the hand and calls him out as a spy, switching to perfect English. But she gets interrupted by a transmission from one of the soldiers at the dig site saying something is leaking from a crypt they blew up with dynamite. She orders Obersturmführer Emmerich Schreiner, an officer sent by Deathshead to check on her, to watch him and points a gun at B.J.(though not before insulting him for not realizing that B.J. was a spy in the first place), while she tells the soldiers not to do anything until she gets there herself. Blazkowicz then takes the knife from his hand and puts it into Schreiner's arm, he then grabs his gun and tries to shoot him and run away but he misses because of an earthquake that knocks him out.
When B.J. wakes up he sees Helga and Schreiner evacuate the tavern, but they forgot the map of the dig site, Blazkowicz takes it to which he tries to follow them through the burning town full of raining Nazi zombies and fights his way through to the dig site. There, he finds Helga and Schreiner again but is captured by a trap that hangs him upside down. She takes back her map from him and uses it to summon King Otto's monster. She thinks she controls it at first and orders it to eat B.J., but the monster quickly changes attitude and grabs her with its mouth and throws her out of the room, fatally wounding her. Schreiner panics and starts to shoot at it until the monster grabs him, beheads him, swallowing his head whole, and throws his remains away. Blazkowicz then manages to break free from the trap and kills it.
During Helga's final moments, after B.J.'s battle with the monstrosity, she laments over losing control over the monster, to which Blaczkowicz retorts by saying she was never in control, though not before finishing her with a gunshot to the chest if he chose to.
Personality[]
In her youth, Helga was an inquisitive individual, but contracted polio that rendered her housebound for months and would leave a lasting injury that would never fully heal. She shows herself in The Old Blood to be acerbic and observant, intelligent yet obsessive, spending her time deeply focused on unearthing her ancestor's secrets. Despite her formidable personality, she is haunted by the memory of her father; in one of her final entries, she ponders if he was ashamed of her affliction, showing she still feels deeply guilty and lost over his death. While ruthless and savvy, she displayed the typical arrogance of the Nazis, assuming she could control the discoveries of Wulfburg due to her bloodline and her experience with the occult, which would be her undoing.
She is a proud alcoholic, with a particular lust for wine, implied in part to be a form of self-medication. She kept a massive store of precious vintages in the cellars of Castle Wolfenstein, and insisted on having selections priority shipped to the dig site rather than suffer the local offerings. That said, she was not ungenerous - even when interrogating prisoners (including a Jew) she made an effort to choose a wine they would enjoy, if for no other reason than to make the process easier. She drank even while working, to Schreiner's disapproval.
She demonstrated considerable personal charisma, able to coax valuable information out of her prisoners and forming a seemingly genuine connection with them in order to extract crucial information - in the same vein, despite her somewhat dour appearance, she had a string of lovers, including a decidedly unprofessional relationship with one of her officers. She was highly cerebral and widely travelled, and immediately sees through B.J.'s waiter disguise by his ignorance of wine and "atrocious German", demonstrating her own perfect command of English. She had considerably more compassion for her own men than her future party members and was highly respected for her willingness to personally assist in the excavation in spite of her disability. Unusually for a ranking officer, she was a woman of action and adventure and had no time for pencil-pushing desk men like Schreiner, and never let an opportunity to lobe casual insults at him pass, even in the midst of extreme danger. She was not intimidated by her superior, Deathshead, believing he should be grateful for all the artefacts she had uncovered - Deathshead apparently had enough faith in her to give her control over an entire division and much autonomy in what projects she undertook.
Upon finding the Monstrosity, Helga believed she would be remembered among the greatest explorers for her discovery - however, B.J. retorted she would be remembered as "just another Nazi." Indeed, she dies a failure and all evidence of her mission is scrubbed and forgotten.
Quotes[]
Trivia[]
- Her name is a portmanteau Helga von Bulow and Doctor Schabbs.
- Schabbs has a heavy resemblance to Helga von Bulow. Her voice is also comparable to Bulow's; her entire plot and the way she dies is based heavily off of von Bulow's.
- An Obersturmbannführer is equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel and commands roughly a thousand men - indeed, B.J will likely have killed this number by the end of the game, suggesting the entire SS-Paranormal Division has been destroyed.
- The Egyptian trophies in her office in the castle may be a reference to the Cursed Sands campaign from the console ports of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
- The Old Blood portrays her as the ancestral owner of Castle Wolfenstein, and a descendant of Otto I. In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, it was Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler who was the owner of Castle Wolfenstein, and portrayed as a descendant of Heinrich I.
- In her office in Castle Wolfenstein she keeps an almost naked image of her lover Karl in one of the books.
- Helga can be killed by Blazkowicz during her final, dying moments, if the player so chooses, otherwise she will simply slump over.
- It is notable that if left to perish on her own, the player's on-screen reticle will come up red when hovered over her "dead" body. Shooting her at this point will "kill" her for real and make it go white as it should.
- She will also not rise as a Shambler, likely due to the mysterious compound being rendered inert by the Monstrosity's demise.
- Looking at her face, it seems that her physique and appearance was partly inspired by a real female S.S officer, Irma Grese, aka the hyena of Auschwitz.
- Helga also has a slight resemblance to Miss Trunchbull, the main antagonist of the book and film Matilda.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ The Art of Wolfenstein: Youngblood
- ↑ Helga's diary
- ↑ Schreiner's letter
- ↑ Letters (The Old Blood)
| Organization | 101st Airborne Division · United States Army · SS Paranormal Division · SS Special Projects Division · Office of Secret Actions |
|---|---|
| Resistance | BJ Blazkowicz · Annette Krause · Pippa Shepherd · Fergus Reid · Ludwig Kessler · Richard Wesley · Katrin · Markus · Village Drunkard |
| Nazis | Rudi Jäger · Helga Von Schabbs · Emmerich Schreiner · |
| Other | Otto I · Eadgyth · Konrad · Siegbald Berger |