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The world’s most famous sex therapist turns 95

The world’s most famous sex therapist turns 95
The great sex educator Ruth Westheimer
Image: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock

A play about the life of the German-born “Dr. Ruth” has just been performed in Cleveland in the US state of Ohio, the documentary film “Ask Dr. Ruth” was released in 2020 and shortly before that the German Consul General David Gill had told her in New York Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

“Dr. Ruth” is a cult – and has been for decades, since she made her breakthrough with a radio show in the early 80s. With an infectious giggle, “Dr. Ruth” gave sex tips and juggled terms like ejaculation and masturbation without inhibitions. The 15-minute question and answer program “Sexually Speaking” on a New York local station was followed by invitations from television stations around the world. Hundreds of thousands sought the expert’s advice under the protection of anonymity. “Her name and the distinctive tone of her voice are inextricably linked to the subject of sex,” the New York Times once said.

“The questions are the same everywhere,” Westheimer once told the German Press Agency. Every country prides itself on having the best lovers. But she couldn’t recognize anyone who was the best in the world. “Nonsense” is also the image of allegedly so puritanical America compared to a sexually much freer Europe. Westheimer has written more than 30 sex guides, many of which have also been published in German. “I didn’t know I was going to be Dr. Ruth. I was lucky.”

escape holocaust

Karola Ruth Siegel was born in 1928 in Wiesenfeld near Frankfurt to a Jewish family. At the age of ten, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, she arrived in Switzerland on a children’s transport. This is how she escaped the Holocaust, but she never saw her parents and her beloved grandmother again. The Nazis murdered her mother and father in the Auschwitz concentration camp. never saw her again. The Nazis murdered her mother and father in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

After the war, still a teenager, she went to Palestine and fought underground for a free Israel. After being badly injured by a shell, she began studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. A check from the German government for 5,000 marks in compensation for suffering enabled her to go to the USA in 1956. There she continued her studies, married Manfred Westheimer and had two children. “Dr. Ruth” is only 1.44 meters tall – but “if greatness were measured in courage, determination and hard work, this little woman would have to be 2.50 meters tall,” Newsday once wrote.

“What can I do tonight?”

“Dr. Ruth” has always returned to her hometown of Frankfurt for the book fair. “I’m avoiding the train station. But in my old apartment at Brahmsstraße 8, in the north end, I looked around again,” she once said in an interview. “It’s difficult for me, but I’m walking proud and with a straight back. Hitler didn’t win! He wanted me to die. Instead, I now have children and grandchildren.”

How is she still so fit and happy at 95? “My secret is that every day I ask myself: What can I do tonight? And then I call someone and we do something.” She no longer has a car, but drives a taxi, and she organizes all her appointments over the phone. “I don’t use email, but I talk on the phone all day.”

Source: Nachrichten

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