Berlin - Ms Beate Uhse, the founder and chairwoman of Germany's best-known erotica dealer, has died, aged 82. Ms Uhse died from a lung infection, the company said.
Born in 1919 in East Prussia - then part of Germany - she left school at 16 to become a pilot.
As a Luftwaffe captain, Ms Uhse flew north out of Berlin with her two-year-old son in 1945 just before the Russians moved in during the closing days of the second World War. Within a year she had started her own business, selling pamphlets on birth control methods.