Beate Uhse-Rotermund

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Beate Uhse-Rotermund
Uhse in 1971
Born	Beate Köstlin (1919-10-25)25 October 1919 Wargenau, East Prussia
Died	16 July 2001(2001-07-16) (aged 81) St. Gallen, Switzerland
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Military career
Service/branch	Luftwaffe
Years of service	1939–1945
Rank	Hauptmann
Unit	Überführungsgeschwader 1
Battles/wars	World War II

Beate Uhse-Rotermund (German pronunciation:

.

Early life

Uhse was born in Wargenau, a neighborhood of Cranz, East Prussia (now Zelenogradsk, Russia). 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 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 at progressive boarding schools "Schule am Meer" and "Odenwaldschule" where she graduated. They informed their children on sexual matters early, and spoke with them openly about sexuality and contraception. At 15, Beate became the Hessian javelin champion.

Career

Civil aviation

At 16, Beate Köstlin went to England for a year to learn English as an

). 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 "flying-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's license.

Finally her parents gave in to her demands, and in 1937 she joined the Rangsdorf pilot school near Berlin. In October of that year, 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

, 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 10 October 1939. However, it had to be canceled because of the beginning of the

Second World War

. On 28 September, Hans-Jürgen Uhse was to be posted; the couple married quietly four hours before his departure.

As a Luftwaffe transport pilot

During the war, stunt piloting became impossible and Beate Uhse was grounded. In her small home in

, the world's first operational jet fighter. Although 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. After the birth, she was permitted to continue flying because she was in a role considered vital to the war effort, and she received permission to hire a nanny.

In October 1944, she was promoted to the rank of

.

In 1945, her husband Hans-Jürgen died in an air crash, leaving Beate a 24-year-old widow with a year-old son.

In April 1945, Berlin was

There she was captured by British forces.

After her release, she settled in Flensburg, in what would become West Germany, with her son.

As a businesswoman

In the early postwar period, former members of the Luftwaffe were not permitted to fly, and Uhse's aviation career ended. 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: former soldiers returning from the war were making their wives pregnant, not caring that there was "no apartment, no income and no future" for any children. Many of the women went to untrained abortionists. 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 rhythm method of contraception, and put together a brochure which explained to the women how to identify their fertile and infertile days.

By 1947, she had sold 32,000 copies of "Pamphlet X" via her "Betu" mail order company, and began to expand to larger cities such as Hamburg and Bremen. Many people wrote her letters asking 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

, offering condoms and books on "marital hygiene." Two years later, the company had 14 employees. Uhse married retailer Ernst-Walter Rotermund and had a second child, Ulrich.

In 1962, in Flensburg, she opened her "speciality store for marital hygiene" largely focused on

. She offered, both in her store and her catalog, 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 1992, her store had been indicted more than 2,000 times. She was also discriminated against by other organizations, including the "Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels" (a financial organization of the German book industry), which refused to admit her 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

. The original stock certificates are greatly desired because of the depiction of two scantily dressed women.

The Beate Uhse business continues to trade throughout Europe under the names Beate Uhse, Pabo and et Eve.

In 2001, Uhse died of pneumonia in a clinic in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Uhse was one of the most important people for sexual liberation in the German-speaking world. In 1989 she received the Federal Cross of Merit (German: Bundesverdienstkreuz).

Despite the fact that she contributed to bettering female sex lives, Beate Uhse remains a controversial figure for radical feminists, who consistently complain about her refusing to hire female collaborators, and would "objectify the female" body in order to sell her products.^[2]

Bibliography

• Uhse, Beate; Pramann, Ulrich (2001). Ich will Freiheit für die Liebe – Beate Uhse: Die Autobiographie [I Want Freedom For Love – Beate Uhse: The Autobiography]. Rebellische Frauen (in German). München: Ullstein Taschenbuch.
  OCLC 174695716
  .
• Uhse, Beate (1989). Mit Lust und Liebe: Mein Leben [With Pleasure and Love: My Life] (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein.
  OCLC 473012200
  .
• Heineman, Elizabeth (2011). Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  OCLC 650505732
  .

References

External links

• Beate Uhse-Rotermund at
  IMDb