Helo Leuchten Brass Desk Lamp

Materials: Cream cast iron trapezoid base. Brass trapezoid decoration on top. Built-in switch. Curved brass rod, joint and parts. 2 brass ball nuts. Brass mushroom lampshade, partial cream painted. Painted white inside. Brass E27 socket.

Height: 35 cm / 13.77”

Lampshade: ∅ 29 cm / 11.41”

Base: 4 x 10 cm / 1.57 x 3.93”

Electricity: 1 bulb E14, 1 x 40 watt maximum, 110/220 volt.
Any type of light bulb can be used, not a specific one preferred.

Period: 1950s, 1960s – Mid-Century Modern.

Designer: To be appraised.

Manufacturer: Helo Leuchten, Am Schwalbanger 48, 86633 Neuburg an der Donau, Germany.

Other versions: A comparable lampshade of this Helo Leuchten brass desk lamp was used for several other lamps. It exists in several colours as you can see in the movies.

Helo Leuchten

Helo traces its origins back to the 1930s, when Henry Gerhard (senior) ran an electrical business under the name Elektrogeschäft Helo in Breslau (then Germany; today Wrocław, Poland).

In 1945, the family fled west and restarted their lives in Neuburg an der Donau. Contemporary local reporting describes how the business was rebuilt after the war and how the name Helo was formed from Henry and Lothar (his son). In the immediate post-war years, the family reportedly began producing work and workshop lamps using available scrap materials from that period.

The company was officially registered in Neuburg in 1946. Starting with practical industrial and work lighting, the firm grew quickly and moved premises more than once before settling at its later address.

After the death of Henry Gerhard in 1964, Lothar Gerhard gradually shifted the business away from manufacturing and towards retail and trade. In 1980, the company joined the German expert retail group.

What happened later? A local newspaper report (23 October 2025) notes that the Expert-Helo store in Neuburg closed, and that the name “Helo” would disappear from the local business landscape with the current owner.

Note: According to several secondary sources, Gebr. Kaiser & Co. Leuchten KG (Lichttechnische Spezialfabrik, Neheim-Hüsten) later obtained the right to use the Helo name and to produce individual lamp models originally associated with Helo. These reportedly include the so-called “Commissaire” lamp (model 6631 Luxus). Variants of this design have in recent years reappeared in the collections of Lightyears, now part of Fritz Hansen. The precise legal and historical scope of these rights, however, remains unclear.

Lamps In The Movies

Ballon (2018)

A Helo Leuchten brass desk lamp (also a green one) was used as a set decoration in the German film Ballon from 2018. A movie about two families from the GDR who flew to West Germany with a homemade hot-air balloon in 1979. It was used in an East German house what is very unlikely at that time. Helo was a West German lighting company and the East was communist and had his own lighting firms, cars, motorcycles and so on. Everything that was sold came from behind the Iron Curtain.