“Dr. Ruth”: Famous sex therapist Ruth Westheimer is dead
Published: Saturday, Jul 13th 2024, 19:20
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Ruth Westheimer was just 1.44 meters tall. But "if height were measured in courage, determination and hard work, this little woman would have to be 2.50 meters tall", Newsday once wrote. Born in Germany, Westheimer survived the Holocaust and became "Dr. Ruth" in the USA, probably the most famous sex therapist in the world. On Friday, Westheimer died at the age of 96 in the presence of her two children, spokesman Pierre Lehu, with whom she also co-wrote several books, confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Westheimer was still full of energy last year. There was a play about her life in Cleveland in the US state of Ohio, the documentary "Ask Dr. Ruth" was released in 2020 and shortly before that, the German Consul General David Gill had awarded her the Federal Cross of Merit in New York. Westheimer had an "adventurous, incredibly colorful life" and "enriched society", Gill said at the time.
Her parents were murdered in Auschwitz
Karola Ruth Siegel was born into a Jewish family in Wiesenfeld near Frankfurt in 1928. At the age of ten, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, she was taken to Switzerland on a Kindertransport. She escaped the Holocaust, but never saw her parents or her beloved grandmother again. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
After the war, while still a teenager, Ruth moves to Palestine, is trained as a sniper and fights underground for a free Israel. She is seriously injured by a grenade. She then began studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. A check from the German government for 5,000 marks as compensation for the suffering she had endured enabled her to move to the USA in 1956. There she continued her studies, married Manfred Westheimer and had two children. She became a US citizen in 1965.
Breakthrough with radio show in the 80s
Westheimer's breakthrough came in the early 80s with a radio show. With an infectious Rumpelstiltskin giggle, "Dr. Ruth" gives sex tips and juggles terms such as ejaculation and masturbation without any inhibitions. The 15-minute question and answer program "Sexually Speaking" on a local New York station is followed by invitations from television stations all over the world. Hundreds of thousands seek the advice of the motherly expert under the protection of anonymity. "Her name and the distinct sound of her voice are inextricably linked with the subject of sex," the New York Times once wrote.
"The questions are the same everywhere," Westheimer once told the German Press Agency. Every country boasts that it has the best lovers. But she could by no means recognize the best in the world. The image of the supposedly puritanical America in comparison to a sexually much freer Europe is also pure "nonsense". Westheimer has written more than 30 sex guides, many of which have also been published in German.
She returned to Frankfurt every year
Dr. Ruth" returned to her hometown of Frankfurt every year for the book fair. "I give the train station a wide berth. But in my old apartment at Brahmsstrasse 8, in Nordend, I took another look around," she once said. "It's difficult for me, but I walk proudly and with a straight back. Hitler didn't win! He wanted me to die. Instead, I now have children and grandchildren. Back then it was an escape. Now I'm sleeping in the Frankfurter Hof. Who would have thought it?"
On her 95th birthday, when asked how she stays so fit and cheerful, she said: "My secret is that I ask myself every day: What can I do tonight? And then I call someone and we do something." She no longer has a car, but drives a cab instead, and she organizes all her appointments by phone, she said at the time. "I don't use email, but I'm on the phone all day."
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