A life well lived.

[Richard A]

Now you remind me, I remember the story of the Honeckers living with a pastor whom they had formerly oppressed. But somehow I had missed that Erich was returned to Germany from Moscow - I had always thought that he'd gone straight from there to Chile, to the (understandable) displeasure of those who weren't quite as forgiving as Holmer had been.

[Arneb]

The idea was to give him a place to live "without removing him from secular justice", as Holmer put it.

I must correct myself - Honecker was released from jail for health reasons during his trial, and the trial was never completed. His co-defendants received sentences of four to seven and a half years.

[Heid the Ba]

Uwe was a better man than me.

[Heid the Ba]

Enzo.

[Lianachan]

Another local lad for me - Donald McBane

Donald McBane was a Scottish Highlander and one of the most accomplished duelists of the 18th century. During the span of his extraordinary career as a soldier, prize fighter, fencing master, and brothel manager, McBane took part in 16 battles, 15 skirmishes, and nearly 100 duels or personal combats. He published his book, The Expert Sword-Man’s Companion, in 1728 where he recounts it all.

I want to read that book.

Will take this elsewhere.

[Heid the Ba]

General John Frederick Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis
Not a particularly outstanding life but a quite splendid name, and also a cautionary tale about tall people in trenches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fred ... s-Trefusis

[Heid the Ba]

Lee Miller, model, photo journalist and all round sort. I have feeling I've posted her before but I've been drinking and can't be arsed checking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Miller

[Мастер]

Lee Miller, model, photo journalist and all round sort. I have feeling I've posted her before but I've been drinking and can't be arsed checking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Miller

Ah, she took a bath in Hitler’s bathtub - I remember her. (Well, not personally.)

[Lianachan]

I have only just heard of Franz Stigler, the German WW2 fighter ace who did a good thing.

[Heid the Ba]

I had heard of the incident but didn't know the pilot's name.
*tips hat*

[Arneb]

A somewhat unusual entry, in line with my pacifist, make love, not war, leanings -

I oresent to you Beate Dorothea Rotermund-Uhse, known as Beate Uhse, 1919-2001

Beate was the dauhter of an unusual couple: Her mother was Germany's first certified female physician, her father was a farmer. Both were libereal spirits, and that was the education Beate got. Before she graduated from the reform-pedagogic Odenwalschule, she learned to sail competetively, became Hassia Champion in the javelin trhow and did a one-year stint as an au-pair in England.

As one of the first women in Gemany - and in Nazi Germany to boot, she learned to flyat age 18, and graduated as an aerobatics pilot age 19. Later, she worked for several German plane builders, flying new machines to their front deployment and having to outsmart several Allied fighter attacks in the process, successful every time. She was even type-rated on the first serially produced jet fighter plane, the Messerschmidt Me262. She earned the Luftwaffe rank of Hauptmann in the process.

Her airmenship saved her from being captured by the Red Army, fleeing Berlin with her son, his caretaker, and four more people in asmall plane out of Gatow airport in April 1945 (that is the purely military airport that later became the airport for the British occupational force; hey, even the Queen used it for her Berlin visits).

After the war, she started a small mail order business with a short a pamphlet about the "calender" anticonception method by Knauss and Ogino - there was high demand, as many, many women at the time wanted to avoid getting pregnant in the harsh postwar environment. Later, she expanded her activities into condoms and generally into literature about "marital hygiene" as anything concerning sex had to be called. Amid protest and lawsuits, she opened her "Fachgeschäft für Ehehygiene (specialty shop for marital hygiene) in Germany's northernmost city of Flensburg.

Her brand became almost synonymous with sex shops and sex cinemas over the years. In postwar West Germany "Beate Uhse" was to sex what hoovering was to vacuum cleaning. Every city had one, and in 1996, her "Sex Museum" opened near Zoo Station in West Berlin. And, as is the way with these things, after the outrage of the early years came the path into relentless commercialzation, objectification and red-light district seediness. Uhse herself was unflinching. She wanted to end the uptight non-conversation about sex that was the norm postwar, she wanted Germans to enjoy themselves, and boy, did she help them. A strong, self-reliant self-made woman, receiving the Bundesverdienstkreuz (the German Order of Merit) in the process, for her coontributions to sexual education and liberation - quite the change of image .

She died in 2001, aged 81, after a bout of pneumonia. Not wanting to be mourned, she ordered a big party to be thrown for everyone who wanted to say goodbye, so a big funfair was held in the small city where she was eventually buried. Her business went public in 1999, but suffered heavily under the boom on online sex after 2000. They reacted by upping their image, opening "flagship stores" in chique inner-city locations, by giving some consideration to women alongside the male-oriented sex shop business, and they even opened halal sex shops oriented at Muslim women living in Europe. The company filed bancruptcy in 2017 but still exists as a Dutch BV.

[Heid the Ba]

An excellent suggestion, just as it was on 20th August 2015 . . .

[Arneb]

Oh dear, I had completely forgotten about that post 8 years ago. How did you even remember it was there?

[Heid the Ba]

I have a memory that collects odd things but doesn't retain others that it should. I can recall the names of cyclists and biathletes from twenty years ago but struggled with the receptionists' names in the office.

[Arneb]

A friend of mine is fond of saying his brain has a trivial lobe.

[Heid the Ba]

It's a guy thing.