German sex ware queen dies

Rotermund: Pilot to business leader

FRANKFURT, Germany -- The pioneer of Europe's largest sex merchandise company and one of Germany's best-known brand names has died at the age of 81.

Beate Rotermund, nee Uhse, a former World War II Luftwaffe test pilot whose chain of erotic shops began in 1947 when she sold information on contraception, died of pneumonia in a Swiss hospital.

Rotermund had given up her executive responsibilities while she remained on the supervisory board but was always regarded as part of "Germany's economic miracle."

Even into her eighties she actively drove her brand by appearing in talk shows on German TV. At shareholders' meetings, investors broke business ttraditionsand lined up for autographs.

Beate Uhse, which like the Ann Summers brand in Britain operates a string of sex shops across Germany plus a mail order service, claims its brand name is recognised by 98 percent of the population -- as recognisable as Mercedes and BMW.

She was an innovator, opening a sex TV channel, putting stores by the side of main roads and producing an Internet Online shopping service.

But throughout she managed to maintain a "wholesome" image, being credited with having almost single-handedly changed Germany's conservative attitude towards sex by pursuing what she called a matter-of-fact and "orderly" approach to her business.

Uhse was a test pilot for an aeroplane maker and became a Luftwaffe captain during World War II, delivering new and repaired fighter planes and dive-bombers to the front.

As Berlin burned in 1945, she flew herself, her two-year-old son and two wounded men out of the city just before it fell to the Russians.

When the Allies refused to let her fly after the war she became a door-to-door saleswoman selling toys and came across many women with unwanted pregnancies.

Uhse built on her first pamphlet on contraception in the 1950s with books such as "Is everything right in our marriage?"

Two days after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Rotermund distributed 25,000 of her order catalogues to East Germans and expanded rapidly into the former communist east.

Beate Uhse's core business -- selling sex videos, erotic underwear, sex toys plus lotions and pills for enhancing sexual potency -- was a first for the stock market when it floated in May 1999.

The sex empire now runs about 50 stores directly, 56 franchises, and has 44 outlets in the Netherlands and Belgium. It generates annual sales of more than 300 million marks ($132.6 million) and claims to be recession-proof.

Shares in the firm fell more than five percent after news of her death and were trading at 12.25 euros, down 5.84 percent, at mid-session.