Uschi Obermaier

Ursula "Uschi" Obermaier, born in 1946 in the Sendling district of Munich, Germany, is a former fashion model and actress. She gained widespread public recognition for her association with the 1968 left-wing movement in Germany, becoming an iconic figure linked to the protests of 1968 and the sexual revolution.

Obermaier initially began an apprenticeship as a photo-restorer before departing the field to pursue modeling. She was discovered by the publication Twen and achieved international fame following a photo shoot in Cameroon with photographer Guido Mangold. As Twen's top model, she went on to work for major magazines and prominent photographers, including Helmut Newton.

Around 1968 to 1969, Obermaier lived in Munich, where she joined the experimental commune and band Amon Düül. Late in 1968, she met communard Rainer Langhans at a concert and subsequently relocated to Berlin's Kommune 1 to live with him. Their open discussion of their relationship made them public symbols of the era's sexual revolution. Media images of Obermaier at political demonstrations closely connected her to the German student rebellions of the 1960s, though she later stated she joined Kommune 1 to be with Langhans rather than from an interest in politics. After Kommune 1 dissolved in 1969, she and Langhans moved to the Highfisch-Kommune in Munich.

During her career, Obermaier was associated with several high-profile figures in music and culture. She joined The Rolling Stones' Tour of the Americas '75 and had relationships with Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Jimi Hendrix, appearing alongside Hendrix in the film Last Experience. In 1973, she began a relationship with Dieter Bockhorn, a club owner from Hamburg's Reeperbahn district. The couple spent six years traveling the world in a customized bus across Asia, Mexico, and the United States, marrying in India. Their relationship ended when Bockhorn died in a motorcycle accident in Mexico on New Year's Eve in 1983.

Obermaier also pursued projects in acting and music. She starred alongside Iris Berben in Rudolf Thome's Detectives (1969), played the lead in Red Sun (1970), appeared in Haytabo, and portrayed Marlene Thompson in Blutrausch (1997). In music, she played maracas for Amon Düül I on three albums—Psychedelic Underground (1969), Collapsing (1970), and Disaster (1972)—and sang on Michael Hoenig's track "Voices Of Where."

Obermaier co-authored her best-selling authorized autobiography, High Times, with Olaf Kraemer, which stayed on the best-seller list for five months and was later adapted into the 2007 biographical film Eight Miles High. In her later life, she became a United States citizen, worked as a jewelry designer while residing in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles, and as of 2021 resides on the Algarve coast in Portugal.