Barbara Ossenkopp was a striptease dancer on the Reeperbahn, she starred in films and appeared on television with Udo Lindenberg.

She later went to Indonesia, became an animal rights activist and worked to save threatened orangutans.

Some time ago the news came: The 78-year-old German, once known as “Chinese Babs” because of her high cheekbones, suffers from Parkinson's and leukemia.

A call for help reached former companions in Hamburg from Indonesia's capital Jakarta.

The Beatles photographer and former co-founder of the St. Pauli-Nachrichten, Günter Zint, then collected donations.

Udo Lindenberg gave "the lion's share" with 5000 euros, Zint told the FAZ on the phone.

"She was a colorful bird of paradise, that's why many friends have kept her in mind."

Till Fähnders

Political Correspondent for Southeast Asia.

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    Ossenkopp was able to undergo a blood wash in the hospital.

    But earlier in the week she was taken to the emergency room.

    A corona test was positive.

    She is now in the intensive care unit.

    Other Germans abroad who had taken care of them in the past few weeks are concerned.

    There was great hope that Ossenkopp could return home to receive treatment there.

    In a short phone call to the FAZ last week, she sounded weak, but was as joking as ever: "Fortunately, you don't see me, I'm completely naked." She was just getting ready to go to the doctor.

    The longed-for trip to Germany had already been delayed.

    The regional doctor at the German embassy does not consider her in her current condition to be able to make the long flight to Germany.

    In addition to her friend Günter Zint, “Die Brücke Jakarta”, a German-Indonesian friendship association, also takes care of her. He wants to continue collecting donations.

    According to Zint, Ossenkopp was astonished at his collection campaign at how many friends she still has back home after decades away.

    He received more than 100 individual donations.

    She said: "That so many people remember the nonsense I was doing back then!"

    From the Reeperbahn to the rescue station

    In fact, it's almost like being out of a dime novel. At the beginning of the sixties she moved from the tranquil Lüneburg to Hamburg, where she initially took a job as a decorator. But the big city had much more to offer. "In the Große Freiheit the Beatles play in the 'Palette', a cellar bar on Gänsemarkt, the press, film and television geeks discuss sexual liberation and political change," wrote the Hamburger Morgenpost about the earlier local fame. Ossenkopp earned her living as a dancer in the "Salambo", a night club in St. Pauli. There “Chinesen-Babs” became a star in the libertarian milieu of the Hamburg neighborhood. In 1974 she danced around panic rocker Udo Lindenberg when he performed his song “Andrea Doria” in Ilja Richter's “Disco 74”.Zint reports that these recordings were only recently shown on television again on the occasion of Lindenberg's 75th birthday.

    In the film “Dorothea's Revenge”, in which the makers target the “schoolgirl reports” that were popular at the time, she played a dominatrix alongside Anna Henkel, who would later become Herbert Grönemeyer's wife. She entered into a relationship with the Austrian director Peter Hajek. After the breakup, a new chapter began. Ossenkopp left Hamburg, moved to Indonesia, initially lived in Bali, just kept afloat as a painter, but also moved in illustrious circles in Indonesian society.

    Then she met Ulrike Freifrau von Mengden, who ran a rescue station for orangutans in a zoo in Jakarta and who even lived in a small house in the middle of the zoo. Barbara Ossenkopp became the assistant and confidante of "Ibu Ulla". Von Mengden died last year, three months before her 100th birthday. After that, Ossenkopp had “nothing at all”, as Günter Zint says. Since then, she has lived impoverished with 18 cats in a simple part of the Indonesian mega-metropolis.