Ursula's obiturary "roughly" translated by Mike Naughton

Dresdner Stareisbärendompteurin Ursula Boettcher is dead [Photo]
Dresden. The globally renowned Eisbärendompteurin Ursula Boettcher is dead She died on Wednesday at the age of 82 in a Dresden hospital, told the circus expert Ernst Gunther, a longtime friend and spokesman for the family on Thursday, confirming a report of the "Dresdner Morgenpost. Born in Dresden in Saxony has been mainly through the legendary "kiss of death" is known in which she was feeding a polar bear from mouth to mouth. Boettcher was also the first and only woman in the world who trained ten o'clock polar bears in the circus ring. Their circus act, they showed, among other things, in the U.S., Japan, Spain and Italy. Especially in the United States, it was celebrated, the media called them "Baroness of the bears".
Among the animals by Ursula Boettcher also included the bear, Tosca - the future mother of the Berlin zoo, Knut-Stars. "The polar bears were their lives," said Ernst-Günther followed that many of her performances. Fear of the giant animals, they have never shown. She was not even half as large with a size of only 1.58 meters, as their polar bears have been. Even as a cooper had to watch as her boyfriend was attacked during a circus act of Kodiak bears, and fatally injured, it is still encountered with their bears. More than 40 years, Ursula Boettcher was in the ring. 1952 her career began at the Circus Busch. First, as a cleaning woman, only three years later, she was allowed to perform their first number with predatory lions. Since 1961 she has performed with the "kiss of death" in the GDR's State Circus and soon became its biggest star. In 1999 the zoo was dissolved and distributed its ten polar bears in various zoos.