It's a German institution.
A retailer who used to have 150 stores and listed in the primary market of the Frankfurt stock exchange.
But now, Beate Uhse, who used to be the world's largest retail of porn and sex toys and a pioneer in this field, the Internet has replaced it in the same way as many other traditional chain stores.
The company has applied for "under-management bankruptcy," and Germany is equivalent to the "Chapter 11" of the United States, enabling it to continue trading while seeking new investors and trying to complete a financial restructuring.
The company is currently unable to repay its debt, including 30 euros (£ 26) paid back in 2019, although the company reported a loss of 6 million euros in the most recent fiscal year in October.
Beate Uhse is named after its founder, a former German Air Force captain and fighter pilot, who was banned from flying by the Allied forces after the war and sought work for war widows, start selling toy doors-to-door.
In doing so, she encountered many unexpected pregnant German women, a legacy of Hitler's proposal to suppress birth control.
This prompted her to write a booklet on natural contraception based on information she learned from the mother of one of the first female doctors in Germany.
She had to give the printer 5 pounds butter.
Six weeks of food stamps-
Let him print it out. The two-
Page pamphlet, named file X, sold 32,000 copies in the first year at a price of 2 copies per copy.
Since then, the Uhse MS has continued to sell other brochures, including a brochure called everything is OK with your marriage.
Since then, Mrs. Uhse has set up a mail order company that sells contraceptives and things that used to be tactfully called "marriage AIDS.
She later recalled: "In Germany, after the war, it was not a great feat to sell goods.
The art is to sell the goods to the market.
"However, her activities are not exactly in line with the post
German morality.
She soon struggled with the first of the more than 2,000 legal cases she faced in her career --
She was fined only once.
When she tried to prove that the condom she sold through mail order was only used by married couples.
However, the mother of the three children always firmly defended what she did because the tennis club decided to ban her from joining, which was clearly the public's disapproval of her business that caused her to be truly unhappy
"Wirstschaftswunder", a miraculous economic reconstruction of West Germany in 1960 and 1950, ensured that she had enough business, and she opened her first store in 1962 --
The first sex store in the world
In her hometown of Flensburg in northern Germany.
With the advent of birth control pills, Germany's attitude towards sex became more liberal in the 1960 generation, and the industry was booming rapidly.
The company continued its explosive growth in the 1970 s, especially after West Germany legalized pornography in 1975, mrs. uhse insists that her output is more tasteful with the "terrible things" introduced by the Scandinavian people.
By the end of the decade, Beate Uhse employs more than 450 people, with a condom manufacturer, an underwear manufacturer, a film distribution company, and a pharmaceutical company that sells various oils and spring medicines.
She is also good at marketing: The company sponsored Germany's answer to Woodstock, the love and peace festival held on Feynman Island in 1970, where Jimmy Hendricks performed
The company opened its first store in the United States in 1981 and resumed her mail order business in 1986, when mail order business had been replaced by physical stores.
The AIDS pandemic in the 1980 s promoted condom sales, and when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, as millions of East Germans clamored to buy goods they had previously been rejected, unification in Germany has increased sales.
Mrs. Uhse distributed her brochure to the old East Germany within two weeks after the wall collapsed.
The company then expanded in Europe, but not in the UK. In the UK, stricter legislation on pornography limits the company's sales. By the mid-
In her 1990 s, Mrs. Uhse was one of the most famous people in Germany, and her fame peaked at the opening of the Beate Uhse Erotic Art Museum in Berlin in 1996.
Then, in 1999, it was decided to go public in SMAX, which is equivalent to the Alternative Investment Market in the UK, and with the stock quadrupling in the days after it started trading, the company's value reached the Euro.
However, it seems afterwards that this is the moment when Beate Uhse is at its peak.
When Mrs. Uhse died in 2001, the company was valued at 400 euros at the age of 81, and the rapid growth of the internet meant that people no longer needed to go to the company's stores to buy pornography.
From the peak of 150 stores, Beate Uhse now has only 30, with annual sales of 285 euros in 2005.
The mail order business has been razed by companies like Amazon, and recent attempts to restart the business based on 50 gray phenomena have backfired.
Victoria's Secret company is considered to be a more upscale competitor, as well as a more flexible new competitor, clearly catering to female customers in a way that is not available than Uhse.
Michael speckett, new chief executive
Former owner of Starbucks in Germany
He took office in April but has so far failed to restructure the company's debt.
He insists that it is still possible to turn things around this week.
Whether he is successful or not, this will not reduce the legacy of Beate Uhse, one of the most transformative and extraordinary figures in Germany post. war history.