Susanne Erichsen
German model (1925–2002)
Susanne Erichsen (born Susanne Firle; 30 December 1925 in Berlin-Steglitz – 13 January 2002 in Berlin) was a German beauty queen, model and entrepreneur.
Soviet forced labor
While working in a film studio in Potsdam, then in the Soviet zone of occupation, on 15 June 1945 she married a Norwegian engineer Sven Erichsen. The Soviets promised to move them to Norway via Moscow, but instead the couple was sent to Stalinogorsk for forced labor to rebuild the town. After five months, her husband was returned to Norway, and she never saw him again. Susanne Erichsen did two years of hard labor, including work in a coal mine in Siberia. She was not sent home to Berlin until 1947, when, due to starvation and abuse, she was too sick to be of further use.
Fashion and modelling career
Back in Germany, she was discovered by a female fashion journalist and worked in the following years as a model and photo model. While vacationing on the island of Sylt in the early summer of 1950 she took part in Miss Schleswig-Holstein beauty contest, and won.
On 2 September 1950 she was crowned Miss Germany at the Kurhaus of Baden-Baden. Berlin fashion designers such as Heinz Oestergard and Gehringer & GLUPP participated.
The public source identifies “Susanne Erichsen” as german model (1925–2002). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Susanne, Erichsen and German.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1681647. VIAF identifies the subject as 264856324. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2002, 1945 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Susanne Erichsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.