Helbig was a soldier in Wehrmacht, fighting in the Soviet Union during World War II.
Immediately thereafter, at the age of thirty, he began studying art history and archeology.
Helbig worked both as a photographer and author of journal articles, with publications such as travel magazine Merian and Atlantis.
[citation needed] Helbig is mostly known for intimate images of young Sicilian men.
Only after his death in Mainz in 1986 were the nude photographs of young men discovered in his estate.