In 1938, two hours before a dance concert by Lotte and Ernest was due to take place, the Nazis prohibited her from appearing, posting notices outside the theatre banning entry to "Good Nazis". At the end, the conductor brought her up on stage and the audience shouted that she should dance. So she made a grand entrance in the auditorium, just as the conductor was announcing she was too ill to perform, and settled down to watch her husband (who was not Jewish) go ahead on his own. They married in 1933, when Lotte was 20, and their daughter Esther was born in 1934.The couple gave dance performances in Cologne, but Nazism was tightening its grip and German Jews were leaving. Her Russian father came from a family of tailors and built a chain of menswear shops in Germany. Her mother was German and died of a stroke when Lotte was eight.

Lotte was chauffeured around in her father's six-seater Mercedes and to please him studied the piano for 11 years. She, though, wanted to be a dancer and trained at the school set up in Cologne by the seminal modern dance artist Mary Wigman.It was at this school that Lotte met her first husband Ernest (or Ernst) Berk, whose family was English although he had been born in Germany. While Vidal Sassoon looked after the fashion set's hair and Mary Quant their clothes, people said, Lotte Berk looked after their figures. But her system was to prove more than a fad and even today is going strong the world over.She was born Liselotte Heymansohn in Cologne in 1913 into a Jewish family. Her racy private life alone would have been worth recording, but she also left behind a famous system of physical exercise.The Lotte Berk technique became an integral part of 1960s and 1970s culture, her classes bristling with celebrities and socialites.

Liselotte Heymansohn, dancer and teacher: born Cologne, Germany 17 January 1913; married 1933 Ernest Berk (one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1963 Herbert Riese (marriage dissolved); died Hungerford, Berkshire 4 November 2003. With her glossy mahogany hair, wide, boldly lipsticked mouth and gleaming, mischievous almond eyes, Lotte Berk had looks as vivid as her personality. Her daughter Cornelia in 1982 was anointed "Deb of the Year" by Life magazine, and "Deb of the Decade" four years later. With her glossy mahogany hair, wide, boldly lipsticked mouth and gleaming, mischievous almond eyes, Lotte Berk had looks as vivid as her personality. Following in her mother's footsteps, Cornelia is an accomplished horsewoman, a minor celebrity and an indefatigable socialiser in her own right.Rupert Cornwell.