commander of Uhse's squadron wanted to move the battalion west. Uhse made her way through the ravaged city to her house in Rangsdorf and picked up her son and his nanny, but when she brought them to the airport, her unit had already left, along with her airplane. She found a small Siebel Fh 104 plane that did not have a pilot, and while it was being fueled she studied the plane's manual, as she had never flown this type. With her son and the nanny, together with four other passengers, two of whom were injured, she left embattled Berlin flying northwest, finally landing in Leck in North Friesland. There she was captured by British forces. After her release, she settled in Flensburg, in what would become West Germany, with her son. As a businesswoman In the early postwar period, former members of the Luftwaffe were not permitted to fly, and Uhse's aviation career ended. First, she made a living on the black market. She was selling products door-to-door and met many housewives and learned of their problems: former soldiers returning from the war were making their wives pregnant, not caring that there was "no apartment, no income and no future" for any children. Many of the women went to untrained abortionists. Uhse remembered lectures her mother (who had died during the war) had given her on sexuality, sexual hygiene and contraception. She searched for information on the Knaus-Ogino rhythm method of contraception, and put together a brochure which explained to the women how to identify their fertile and infertile days. By 1947, she had sold 32,000 copies of "Pamphlet X" via her "Betu" mail order company, and began to expand to larger cities such as Hamburg and Bremen. Many people wrote her letters asking for advice on sexuality and eroticism. "These people were unaware of the facts of life," she wrote in her autobiography. Soon she was also selling condoms and "marriage guides." In 1951, with four employees, she started the Beate Uhse Mail Order Co., offering condoms and books on "marital hygiene." Two years later, the company had 14 employees. Uhse married retailer Ernst-Walter Rotermund and had a second child, Ulrich. In 1962, in Flensburg, she opened her "speciality store for marital hygiene" largely focused on sexuality, thus considered as the first sex shop. She offered, both in her store and her catalog, more "articles for marital hygiene."