Beate Uhse-Rotermund
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Beate Uhse-Rotermund (German pronunciation: [beˈaːtə ˈuːzə ˈʁoːtɐmʊnt] (
); born Beate Köstlin [ˈkœstliːn] October 25, 1919 – July 16, 2001)
was a German pilot and entrepreneur. The only female stunt pilot in Germany in the 1930s, after World War II she started the first sex shop in the world. The company she started, Beate Uhse AG, is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and is the world leader in sales of sexual aids. The company also started a television channel on the Premiere network of television channels.
Life
Uhse was born in Wargenau near Cranz, East Prussia. She was the youngest of three children of the farmer Otto Köstlin and the doctor Magarete Köstlin (one of the first five female doctors in Germany).
When she was eight years old, her older brother told her the myth of Icarus. Beate was fascinated by the story–and by the idea of flying. So much so that she gathered chicken feathers and glued together some wings and jumped from the roof of her parents' veranda. Beate was a wild child. Her parents did not try to control her, instead they encouraged their daughter in her interests and desires. They assisted her in getting a good education. They informed their children on sexual matters early, and spoke with them openly about sexuality and contraception. At fifteen Beate became the Hessian javelin champion.
War-time pilot
At age sixteen Beate Köstlin went to England for one year, to learn English as an au pair. Afterwards, she returned to her parents' home, where she, to satisfy her parents, obtained a "proper" education (in Home Economics). During a trip to Berlin, her father met a Mr. Sachsenberg, a lecturer on motor sports from the German Aero-Club (a nonprofit organization dedicated to flying), and complained to him of his "fly crazy" daughter and the "nonsensical" concept of a female pilot. Sachsenberg was, instead, excited by the idea, and sent the seventeen-year-old Beate information about obtaining a pilot license.
Finally her parents gave in to her demands, and in 1937 Beate joined the Rangsdorf pilot school near Berlin. In October, on her 18th birthday, she received her pilot's license. In 1938 she passed the stunt pilot exam, and shortly thereafter competed in a race in Belgium. She won in her category, and also won 2nd place overall in target landing and 3rd in "punctual flight."
She then worked for the Bücker aircraft company as a test pilot, then, at age nineteen, as a delivery pilot for the Friedrich aircraft factory. Soon after, she was asked by the UFA film company to work as a double in films. She worked with Hans Albers, a film star she particularly admired, and with numerous others. In the German Propaganda Movie "Achtung - Feind hört mit" she performed a stunt as a double for German Actor René Deltgen in which she flew through a balloon barrier and simulated an uncontrolled dive.
Beate fell in love with her stunt piloting instructor, Hans-Jürgen Uhse, but repeatedly rejected his proposals of marriage. She swore she would "never ever give up flying for a man." Since Hans-Jürgen strongly supported her ambitions, however, she finally accepted, but her father resisted. For one whole year, her father refused to bless their union. Finally, a festive wedding was scheduled for October 10, 1939. However, it had to be canceled because of the beginning of the war. On September 28, Hans-Jürgen Uhse was to be deployed; the couple married quietly four hours before his departure.
Because of the war, stunt piloting became impossible, and Beate Uhse was forced to remain grounded. In her small home in Rangsdorf she felt claustrophobic, and so she accepted an offer by the Luftwaffe (German air force) to fly in an aircraft transport squadron. Thus, she was occasionally also able to fly aircraft that she "otherwise would not be able to get to": the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and 110, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and at the end of the war even the Messerschmitt Me 262. Although being attacked several times by allied aircraft she continued as she felt that after the war, with this experience, she would be able to have a career as a pilot.
In 1943 her son Klaus was born. Because she was in a role vital to the war effort, she was permitted to continue working, and received permission to hire a nanny.
In October 1944 she was promoted to the rank of captain and was assigned to the Überführungsgeschwader 1 (transfer squadron 1) based in Berlin-Staaken.
In 1945, her husband Hans-Jürgen had a fatal crash, and left Beate a twenty-four-year-old widow with a year-old son.
In April 1945, Berlin was surrounded by Allied forces. The commander of Beate Uhse's battalion wanted to move the battalion further west. Beate made her way through the destroyed city to her house in Rangsdorf and picked up her son and his nanny. She brought both to the airport, but her battalion had already left, along with her airplane. She found a small Siebel Fh 104 plane that did not have a pilot. While it was being fueled she studied the plane's manual, as she had never before flown this model. Together with two injured, her two-year-old son and the nanny, she left Berlin to the west, finally landing in Leck in North Friesland. She was captured there by British troops.
After her release, she settled in Flensburg with her son.
Second career: businesswoman
Beate Uhse's career as a pilot ended after the war: former members of the Luftwaffe were not permitted to fly. The young widow therefore had to find some other way to earn money to feed her son. First, she made a living on the black market. She was selling products door-to-door and met many housewives and learned of their problems: the men returning from the front were impregnating their wives, not caring that there was "no apartment, no income and no future" for the kids. Many of the women went to untrained abortionists. Beate Uhse remembered lectures her mother (who had died during the war) had given her on sexuality, sexual hygiene and contraception. She searched for information on the Knaus-Ogino method of contraception (rhythm method), and put together a brochure which explained to the women how to identify their fertile and infertile days.
By 1947 she had sold "Pamphlet X" 32,000 times through her "Betu" mail order company, and began to expand to larger cities such as Hamburg and Bremen. Many people wrote her letters, to ask for advice on sexuality and eroticism. "These people were unaware of the facts of life," she wrote in her autobiography. Soon she was also selling condoms and "marriage guides."
In 1951, with four employees, she started the "Beate Uhse Mail Order" company, offering condoms and books on "marital hygiene." Just two years later, the company had fourteen employees. Beate Uhse married retailer Ernst-Walter Rotermund and had a second child, Ulrich.
In 1962, in Flensburg, she opened her "speciality store for marital hygiene," the first sex store in the world. She offered, both in her store and her catalog, more and more "articles for marital hygiene." Soon the police began acting against the items in her store which supposedly served to "inflame and satisfy lustful desires in a manner contrary to decency and morality." By the year 1992, her store had been indicted more than 2,000 times. She was also discriminated against by other organizations: the "Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels" (a financial organization of the German book industry) refused to admit her Stephensen publishing house due to "moral concerns." The Flensburger tennis club refused to admit her due to "general concerns."
In 1979 she divorced her second husband. In 1983, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, but survived. At age seventy-five she obtained a diving license. In 1996, she fulfilled a long-held dream, and opened the Beate Uhse Erotic Museum in Berlin. Three years later, in 1999, her company, Beate Uhse AG, was listed on the German stock exchange and was met with great interest in the financial community. The stock was oversubscribed sixty-four times in its initial public offering. The stock certificates are greatly desired because of the depiction of two scantily dressed women.
Uhse died of pneumonia in a clinic in St. Gallen, Switzerland in 2001.
Like Oswalt Kolle, Uhse was one of the most important people for sexual liberation in the German-speaking world. In 1989 she received the "Bundesverdienstkreuz" (German Cross of Merit), and in 1999 she was declared an honorary citizen of the city of Flensburg.
Bibliography
- Beate Uhse und Ulrich Pramann: Ich will Freiheit für die Liebe — Beate Uhse [Beate Uhse: I Want Freedom For Love]. Die Autobiographie. Ullstein Taschenbuch. 2001. ISBN 3-548-60049-2.
- Beate Uhse: Mit Lust und Liebe. Mein Leben. Ullstein. 1989. ISBN 3-550-06429-2.
- Elizabeth Heineman: Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse. The University of Chicago Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-226-32521-7.
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