Uze, Beate

Beate Uze was born into the family of farmer Otto Köstlin and doctor Margaret Köstlin (one of the first five female doctors in Germany). She was the youngest child of three children.

At the age of eight, she heard from her brother the legend of Icarus . She was struck by both the story itself and the idea of ​​flying - so much so that the girl began to collect chicken feathers, after which she glued her wings and jumped with them from the roof of her father’s veranda.

Parents did not try to discipline her, but on the contrary indulged her and supported her in everything that was interesting to her and what she was fond of. They took care of a good school education. Parents openly spoke with the children about everything, including sexual education and the necessary hygiene . At age 15, Beate became a master of sports in javelin throwing.

Under no circumstances does Beate want to follow in the footsteps of her parents and become a doctor or a farmer. She dreams of a career as a pilot .

Pilot career

At the age of 16, Beate went to England for one year as an au pair to study English . After that, she returned to her parents' household and, following their persuasion, received the “real” profession of a housewife. At this time, her father accidentally met on a train with a representative of a German flying club - a certain Mr. Saxenberg, and "complained" to him about his "crazy daughter" on flights and the "absurd" idea of ​​female pilots. Saxenberg, on the contrary, was delighted with this idea, and sent Beate materials with information about the training for the pilot.

In the end, the parents gave in to the onslaught of their daughter, and in 1937 Beate began attending the Rangsdorf flight school near Berlin . In October, on her birthday, she received a pilot's license. In 1938, she passed the artistic piloting test and shortly afterwards played for Germany in a “foreign rally” in Belgium . She took 1st place in the races in her category, 2nd in the sight landing competition and 3rd in the flight accuracy competition.

For some time she worked as a trainee at the Bücker factories , then, at the age of 19, she switched to the Friedrich aircraft factory as a test pilot . Soon she received an invitation from the UFA film studio for the role of backup pilot and gladly accepted this invitation. In this position, she worked, among others, with Hans Albers , her role model. In the film “ Water for Kanitogi ”, she, like Rene Deltgen's understudy, flew through a balloon barrage and imitated a crash.

Beate was in love with her artistic pilot, Hans Jürgen Uze, but nonetheless rejected all of his marriage proposals. She “never wants to stop flying for the sake of any man in her life.” Since Hans-Jürgen fully supported her in this, she eventually yielded to him, but a new obstacle arose - her father did not agree to marriage. For a whole year he did not give his blessing, but in the end he lost, and the wedding was scheduled for October 10, 1939 . Because of the outbreak of war, this was not possible to do. September 28, Hans Jürgen was supposed to go to the front. They got married 4 hours before his departure according to the military wedding procedure.

Sports flights during the war were prohibited, and Beate was forced to remain on the ground. She could not reconcile herself with life in a small house in Rangsdorf and therefore accepted the Luftwaffe ’s offer to work in a squadron of aircraft carriers. She had the opportunity to fly on airplanes , which in other circumstances she would never have been allowed: Junkers Ju 87 and Messerschmitt. She decided that with the experience of flying on such aircraft, she would have a good chance of getting a pilot's seat after the war.

In 1943, her son Klaus was born. Since she worked in a military position, she received permission to hire a child care attendant and continue to work. In 1945, her husband died in an accident, leaving Beate, 26, a widow with a one-year-old child. After the death of her husband, Beate, now in the rank of Hauptmann , continued to drive planes to the front , while often falling under fire and at times barely escaping death.

In April 1945, Berlin was surrounded. Beate commander wanted to overtake his link to the west. Beate made her way through the ruined city to Rangsdorf, where she took her son and maid. They returned to the airfield , but her link, along with her plane, had already flown away. She found a refueling aircraft to evacuate the wounded - with a flight mechanic , but without a pilot. Having loaded the wounded, the son, the maid and all who wanted to fly away, she took off with a big overload. One of the last she left Berlin towards the west and landed safely in Lek - in northern Friesland . Here Beate was captured by British troops. After being released from captivity , she and her son settled in Flensburg .

Entrepreneurial career

A pilot's career for Beate after the war is impossible - former Luftwaffe pilots are forbidden to fly. A young widow needs to find another way to feed herself and her little son. First, she began working in the black market . She walks from house to house and resells various goods. At the same time, she gets acquainted with many housewives and finds out their problems: husbands who have returned from the front, as well as their wives, have a need for sexual relations, but at the same time they are afraid to have a child, because for children “there is no housing, no income and no future”. Many do not know of any other way but to have illegal abortions . Beate recalls the lessons of sex education, sexual hygiene, and pregnancy protection that her already deceased mother had given her by then. She searches for information on the Knaus-Ogin contraceptive method and publishes a brochure that describes how women can determine the days on which conception is not possible.

Until 1947, the Text X brochure was sold in the amount of 32 thousand copies at a price of 50 pfennig apiece. With the help of this capital, Beate extends the activities of his Beate Newsletter to large cities such as Hamburg and Bremen . Many people send her letters asking for advice on sexuality and eroticism . In her autobiography, she writes: "People did not know the most obvious things." Soon, in addition to “Text X”, she begins to sell condoms and “Marriage books”.

In 1951, Beate Uze founded the company “Goods by Beate Uze Mail”. Condoms and books on Marriage Hygiene are offered for sale. After 2 years, the company employs 14 people. Beate Uze marries the Flensburg businessman Ernst-Walter Rotermund and gives birth to his second son - Ulrich.

In 1962, she opened in Flensburg her first store, “Special Hygiene Shop for Marriage,” the world's first sex shop . On the advice of her lawyer, she opens a store on Christmas Eve . In his opinion, indignant burghers would not attack the store on Christmas, and after Christmas the indignation would have cooled down. The lawyer's calculations were justified. In the store, as well as in the catalog, Beate offers products for “marriage hygiene”. A little time had passed before the police , according to the indignant burgher, began to hunt for those of her goods that served as "unnatural, which decides decency and traditions, encourages the satisfaction of sexual arousal." Until 1992, more than 2,000 lawsuits were filed against her firm. Beate Ouze is experiencing discrimination of another kind: the stock exchange of German booksellers denies membership to its publisher Stephenson because of "moral considerations." She does not want to be accepted into Flensburg Tennis Club because of “general thoughts”.

In 1979, she divorced her husband. In 1983, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer , which she, however, survived. At 75, she takes an exam for a diver . In 1996 , she fulfills her many-year-old dream and opens the Beata Uze Erotic Museum in Berlin. In 1999, her company issues shares and goes public, which causes great interest in the financial world. The stock price rises 64 times.

Beate Uze dies in 2001 in a Swiss clinic due to pneumonia.

Beate Uze has made a significant contribution to sexuality education in the German-speaking world. In 1989, she was awarded the Federal Cross for Merit; in 1999 , she was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Flensburg .