Rudolf Hausner, recommends Helnwein as his successor as professor of the master-class for painting at the University of Visual Art in Vienna.
Helnwein declines, leaves Vienna and moves with his family to Germany ...

"Time" magazine commissions Robert Rauschenberg and Gottfried Helnwein to design covers with Deng Xiaoping.

1984 "Helnwein", the film by Peter Hajek, opens the Austrian Week in the Berlin film festival, "Berlinale".
The film is awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize and in the same year wins the Eduard Rhein Prize and the Golden Kader of the city of Vienna for outstanding camera work.

A self-portrait collage as a contribution to the "1984 - Orwell and the Present Day" exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna.

His self-portrait is shown in the exhibition "Köpfe und Gesichter" (Heads and Faces) in the Darmstadt Kunsthalle.

Helnwein's self-portrait is on the cover of the Italian news magazine "L'Espresso".

The office of Soviet foreign minister Gromyko tries to acquire Helnwein's portrait of Gromyko, which appeared as a "Time" cover.
But the painting is already part of a collection in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

1983 One-man show at Munich Stadtmuseum .
The exhibition is seen by more than a hundred thousand people ...

ZDF and ORF (German and Austrian National Television) produce the film "Helnwein", directed by Peter Hajek. In Los Angeles Helnwein meets Muhammad Ali, who appears in the film.

Bavarian Television produces a film portrait of Helnwein directed by Hans-Dieter Hartl.
...

"Rettet die Donau" (Save the Danube).
- the Austrian art-collector and patron Hans Dichand finances a campaign with large bill- boards of Helnwein's artwork throughout Austria against the destruction of the last great riverside meadowland woods in Europe by the Austrian power-station company Donau- kraftwerke AG.

Helnwein meets with Andy Warhol at his factory in New York .
...

The Higher College of Visual Art (Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften) in Hamburg offers Helnwein a Chair.
Helnwein demands no tests and no age-restrictions as pre-requisites for his students. He wants the freedom to accept anybody, including children. The college rejectes this demand as being against university regulations and Helnwein declines the offer ...

For "Zeit" magazine, Peter Sager writes a cover story about Helnwein.
The self-portrait as a screaming blinded man is used for this cover story and later for the cover of the Scorpions' LP "Blackout".

Helnwein's portrait of Kennedy makes the cover of "Time" for the 20th anniversary of the President's death.

First monograph, texts: H. C. Artmann, Botho Strauss, Wolfgang Bauer and Barbara Frischmuth.

Austrian poet and playwright Wolfgang Bauer writes the ballad "Song for Helnwein - Boulevard of Broken Dreams".
Begin of the friendship with Wolfgang Bauer ...

1979 One-man show with pen-and-ink drawings in the Albertina Museum, Vienna.

"Life not Worth Living".
Spurred into action by an interview in the Austrian newspaper "Kurier" in which the country's top court psychiatrist, Dr Heinrich Gross, admits killing children at Vienna's "Am Spiegelgrund" Pediatric Unit during the war by poisoning their food, Helnwein paints "Life not Worth Living" - a watercolour of a little girl "asleep" on the table, her head in her plate. The painting gets published in Austrias leading newsmagazine Profil and sparkes a nationwide debate that finally leads to Gross' appearing before a Vienna court . The judge rules Gross is mentally unfit to be tried. ...

Aktion in the International Year of the Child.
R. Höpfinger and E. Regnier hand out sweets and toys bearing Helnwein pictures of wounded children to passers-by in Zürich. ...