Background
Born in Zagreb to Hungarian father Kalman Vlahovics and Austrian mother Vera, Helga grew up speaking German with her mother while also learning English.
Born in Zagreb to Hungarian father Kalman Vlahovics and Austrian mother Vera, Helga grew up speaking German with her mother while also learning English.
She was one of the most popular television presenters in the 1980s. Vlahović started working at Zagreb Radio and Television (part of the Yugoslav Radio Television network) in 1964, while studying German, English, and art history at the University of Zagreb. With her newfound job, she left the studies and ended up not completing her degrees.
By 1966, she became an anchorwoman of various entertainment and musical television shows, putting her in charge of such popular programs as television Magazin and musical television shows.
In 1968, she was selected to run the Sopot International Song Festival in Poland, and in 1971 she ran the song festival in Scheveningen, Netherlands. She was then placed in charge of the morning talk show Good Day, Yugoslavia (which she hosted) in 1972, as well as the music variety show Svjetla pozornice (Stage Lights) in 1977 and 1978.
From 1978 to 1980, she organized the Jadranski susreti (Adriatic Reunion, a Yugoslav version of Jeux Sans Frontières). In 1984 and 1988, Vlahović organized the programs Beč pozdravlja Zagreb, Zagreb pozdravlja Beč (Vienna Salutes Zagreb, Zagreb Salutes Vienna) and Dubrovnik-Stuttgart, which were musical and travelogue series broadcast between JRT, ORF, and Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator, respectively, geared at Yugoslav guest workers who wanted to "see home" but could not afford to make a trip there.
With the fall of Yugoslavia in 1991 and the onset of the Croatian War of Independence, Vlahović was quickly put in charge of informational television series relating to the war on the newly formed HRT channel for the independent nation of Croatia.
She was head of "war information programming" until the end of war in 1995. In 1996, she started her own television series, Govorimo o zdravlju (We Talk About Health), which covered many health and wellness topics. After 42 years of working at JRT and HRT, Vlahović retired in 2006.