On Sunday, June 4, Ruth Westheimer turns 95. But what is arguably the most famous sex therapist in the world is still full of energy.
In Cleveland, Ohio, a play about the life of German-born “Dr. Ruth” mentioned. In 2020, the documentary «Ask Dr. Ruth,” 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,” Gil said.
“Dr. Ruth” has been a cult following since she broke through with a radio show in the early 1980s. With an infectious Rumpelstiltskin giggle, “Dr. Ruth’s sex tips and juggled terms like ejaculation and masturbation without inhibitions.
The 15-minute “Sexual Speaking” question and answer program on a local New York 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 inseparable from the subject of sex,” the New York Times once said.
“The questions are the same everywhere,” Westheimer once told the German news agency. Every country prides itself on having the best lovers. But she couldn’t recognize anyone who was the best in the world.
Sheer “nonsense” is also the image of the supposedly puritanical America compared to a sexually much freer Europe. Westheimer has written over 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.”
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 came to Switzerland on a Kindertransport.
This is how she escapes the Holocaust, but she never sees her parents and her beloved grandmother again. The National Socialists murdered his father and mother in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
After the war, still a teenager, Ruth goes to Palestine and fights underground for a free Israel. After being seriously injured by a grenade, she goes to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.
A check from the federal government for 5,000 marks as compensation for the suffering she had suffered enabled her to go to the US in 1956. There she continued her studies, married Manfred Westheimer and had two children.
“Dr. Ruth” is only 5ft 10in tall – but “if greatness were measured in courage, determination and hard work, this little woman would have to be 8ft 10in”, Newsday once wrote.
In her hometown of Frankfurt, “Dr. Ruth» returned again and again on the occasion of the book fair. “I make a wide arc around the train station. But in my old apartment at Brahmsstrasse 8, on the north side, I looked around again,” she said in an interview.
“It’s hard 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. Then it was an escape. Now I sleep in it” Frankfurter Hof”. Who would have ever thought that?”
How come she is 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 then we do something.” She doesn’t have a car, but drives a taxi and arranges all her appointments over the phone. “I don’t use email, but I talk on the phone all day. “
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
