The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum (german: Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum) (1996 – 2014) was a
sex museum in the
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the ...
district of
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
.
The museum was opened in 1996 near
Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station
Berlin Zoologischer Garten station (german: Bahnhof Berlin Zoologischer Garten, colloquially Bahnhof Zoo, ) is a railway station in Berlin, Germany. It is located on the Berlin Stadtbahn railway line in the Charlottenburg district, adjacent to t ...
by
Beate Uhse
Beate Uhse-Rotermund (; born Beate Köstlin , 25 October 1919 – 16 July 2001) was a German pilot, entrepreneur and sex pioneer. She was one of the very few female stunt pilots in Germany in the 1930s. During World War II she ferried planes fo ...
, the early stunt
pilot
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...
and
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...
, who in 1962 started the world's first
sex shop
A sex shop is a retailer that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, pornography, and other related products.
An early precursor of the modern sex shop was a chain of stores set up in t ...
. The collection features historic Asian and European
erotic art
Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts that includes any artistic work intended to evoke erotic arousal. It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity, and has included works in various visual mediums, including drawings, engr ...
including several lithographs by
Heinrich Zille
Rudolf Heinrich Zille (10 January 1858 – 9 August 1929) was a German illustrator, caricaturist, lithographer and photographer.
Childhood and education
Zille was born in Radeburg near Dresden, son of watchmaker Johann Traugott Zill (''Zille'' ...
as well as early
pornographic films. It claims to be "the world's largest erotic museum".
The museum closed in September 2014. Initially the museum was looking for new premises, but due to the market development in Berlin the museum never reopened. For the exhibits, a loss in value of €1.2 million was recorded in the 2015 annual report.
See also
*
List of sex museums
A sex museum is a museum that displays erotic art, historical sexual aids, and documents on the history of erotica. They were popular in Europe at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, the era of the sexual revolution.
Since the 1990s, thes ...
References
In Berlin, the Art of Sex, by Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp. ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', April 18, 1999.
Museums in Berlin
Defunct museums in Germany
Museums established in 1996
Museums disestablished in 2014
Buildings and structures in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Sex museums in Germany
Uhse, Beate
Women's museums
Women and sexuality
1996 establishments in Germany
2014 disestablishments in Germany
History of women in Germany
{{sex-stub