Partner Jose del
Ferro
Oswalt Kolle (2 October 1928 in Kiel - 24 September 2010 in Amsterdam) was
a german-Dutch journalist, author and film producer, who is best known in
German-speaking countries for his films about sexual education. Kolle had
lived in Amsterdam since 1969 and had Dutch citizenship. In his 1997 book Open
to Both Sides he came out as bisexual. With his wife Marlies (died 2000), to
whom he had been married since 1953, he had three children. Kolle lived with
his wife in an "open marriage" for 47 years. Among his numerous affairs was
Romy Schneider, he also had relationships with
Horst Buchholz and
O.E. Hasse.
After the death of his wife, he was in a monogamous relationship with the dutch
Jose del
Ferro (born 1941) and lived in the quiet and elegant Beethoven quarter of Amsterdam.
Oswalt Kolle was a son of the renowned psychiatrist Kurt Kolle. Against his father's wish that he also become a doctor, Kolle completed an apprenticeship in agriculture after the Second World War, but then came to journalism through personal circumstances. He began his writing career as a trainee at the Frankfurter Neue Presse. He first made a name for himself as a film journalist, became local editor of the Frankfurt night edition in 1951 and was an employee of the trade magazine Filmblätter until 1953, before he joined the newly founded Bild in Hamburg and wrote gossip stories for them. "Bild, I quickly realized, was more of a fairytale sheet than a newspaper," he once remarked in context. After leaving there in 1955, he wrote articles about celebrities for the Berlin B.Z., where he was head of culture from 1955 to 1959. He later became deputy editor-in-chief of Star Revue (Die Film- und Fernsehzeitschrift), a magazine that belonged to the Spiegel publishing house from 1955 to 1960.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Kolle was instrumental in popularizing sexual education. He wrote educational series for magazines such as Quick and Neue Revue. He has also published books and other publications on sexuality. Your Child, the Unknown Being was Kolle's first successful book, his most important books were translated into several languages and were also internationally successful. At this time he worked closely with Josef von Ferenczy and became active for him as an author. He wrote his book Das Wunder der Liebe in 1968, a paperback of the same title was published by Heyne in 1971.
Between 1968 and 1972 Kolle produced educational films. Before his first film Das Wunder der Liebe was released for cinemas in Germany, Kolle had to negotiate for days with censors of the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (FSK). Every single scene was discussed, with one of the censors uttering the sentence "Mr. Kolle, you probably want to turn the whole world upside down, now even the woman should be on top!" The educational films often brought him the accusation of violating custom and morality, but were commercial successes. Worldwide, 140 million viewers saw the films.
In contrast to most contemporary sex films, Kolle's films showed almost as many naked male and female bodies. It was also unusual that he starred with his wife, daughter and son in one of his educational films and had himself photographed with his family on the nude beach for a magazine on Sylt. With his love school, he created a television series on sexual education. Kolle also wrote light novels such as Der Psychiater, Der Clan and Sylter Sommer. For RTL he developed the idea for the entertainment series Sylter Geschichten. He also revised the scripts of his educational films, which were successfully broadcast by the private television station in 1997. In 1996, Kolle, who had openly admitted his bisexuality since the 1990s, took part in the 4th International Bisexual Symposium (IBIS) in Berlin. The motto of the event was "The many faces of bisexuality". Other participants included Fritz Klein and Erwin J. Haeberle.
In 2000 he was awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Sexual Reform by the German Society for Social Scientific Sexual Research (DGSS). On 1 September 2008, Kolle's autobiography was published by Rowohlt-Verlag under the title Ich bin so frei. My life, in which he wrote, among other things, about euthanasia for his cancer-stricken wife.
In 2010 he was honored with the IBKA Prize for his services to sexual
self-determination. Kolle worked as a publicist until his death. Most
recently, he dealt with topics such as current political events and sexuality
in old age. His last book, which he called his legacy, is Sex: The 10 Deadly
Sins (2011). Together with the sex therapist and author Beatrice Wagner, he
used ten true stories to describe what still leads to reluctance, injuries and
divergence in couple and sexual life today. Kolle died after finishing the
manuscript.
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