Beate Uhse, back in the day, was quite a character. She passed away a few years ago, having led a full life, well into her 90’s. Her sex shops (selling clothing and all the usual accoutrements) enlightened Germans and the world to the sometimes verboten joys of sex. In the course of her activities, she built a multimillion Euro corporate business. Her history prior to all this was intriguing. She was one of the first female test pilots in Germany at age 19, later flying Stukas for the Luftwaffe. Later, after the war, she realized her potential as a liberator of female sexuality while talking to women in her capacity as a door to door saleswoman. Die hausfrauen would talk to her about unwanted pregnancies and birth control issues. So she came up with a little booklet which was really informative on such matters. That’s how the Beate Uhse business got started.
Having done many tours of East Germany in the 70’s, I remember only too well how scary it all was. Passports had to be surrendered and once you were in Berlin, having driven that terrible road, along the ‘corridor’, you’d come into contact with Russians and a completely other kind of world, a time warp actually, in some instances. If you visited the salons and tea rooms there might be a string quartet playing and then once out on Kurfürstendam, there would be the wildest kind of street culture and fashions with every Western decadence your heart or wallet could desire / afford. One time while driving through the East / West corridor, our tour manager thought it might be interesting to take a detour. Needless to say after he pulled the car off the road into some drab village, we were surrounded by four police cars, and forced out of the vehicle by armed police dressed in fur hats and great coats complete with guns and German Shepherd dogs in attendance. They must have taken pity on us in our platform shoes and silk shirts and promptly bundled us back into the car and set us on our way with stern warnings.
I wonder what they would have made of it all if they’d have known that 30 years into the future, there would have been a store selling dildos at their former check point! Funny old world! Make love, not war, I think the saying goes.
~ A.P.
