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Uschi Obermaier, like fellow model and rock star girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, is famous for the men in her life. But she is also remembered for her radical political associations, particularly the left-wing student movement in West Berlin in the late ’60s, the milieu that produced the Baader-Meinhof gang/Red Army Faction, the shooting of young college student Benno Ohnesorg by police during a demonstration, and attempted assassination of leftist student leader Rudi Dutschke.

Uschi was briefly a member of Amon Düül (she played maracas on their albums Collapsing and Disaster) and lived with them in their Munich commune before moving to Kommune 1 in West Berlin with her new boyfriend, shaggy leftist political activist and communard Rainer Langhans in September 1968. Ironically she had no real interest in politics at the time, despite becoming the poster girl for the Left, being seen at numerous political rallies and demonstrations, and only moved to Kommune 1, West Germany’s first political commune, with hardcore Marxist values, drugs, and free love, just to be with Langhans. The couple met at the International Song Days music festival in Essen.

The Independent described daily life at Kommune 1:

Free sex, agit-prop political stunts, drugs and endless political discussion dominated life in Commune 1, where the inmates slept on mattresses on the floor. To rid the commune of bourgeois tendencies, all available cash was shared, the doors were torn off the lavatories and phone calls were piped through a loud speaker. Even inmates’ letters home to their parents were read out in full to the assembled communards.

Uschi was outspoken about sex and drugs, and cavalier about posing node, appearing on the covers of Stern and Playboy, and also posing at age 60, wearing only a pirate hat, in 2007. She recalled her youth in an interview with Bijan Tehrani in 2008:

I just wanted to be free. I didn’t think I wanted to be a rebel; I just wanted to be free and do the things I wanted to do, without anyone hindering me. I wanted to live the experiences in my own skin, it wasn’t enough for me to be told what it was, I had to experience it down to my own bones, to make a judgment for what I liked and didn’t like.

Among her lovers were Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards (who wrote about their relationship affectionately in his 2010 autobiography, Life and is still on friendly terms with her), and Mick Jagger. She met Dieter Bockhorn, a Hamburg club owner and former pimp, in 1973. She and Bockhorn were together for ten years, eventually marrying in India and travelling all over the world in a customized bus. After Bockhorn’s sudden death Uschi moved to the U.S. A film based on her autobiography, Eight Miles High, was released in 2007.

Uschi now lives quietly in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles, where she works as a jewelry designer.

Uschi in the film Red Sun (Rote Sonne), 1969, below: