The Woman Who Married The Berlin Wall

Photo: via kotzendes-einhorn.de

“Wow. He’s more good looking than in the pictures.”  This is how Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer, who married the Berlin wall on 17 June 1979 describes her feelings on first ‘meeting’ the wall.

Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer, who lives in Liden, Sweden in a house that doubles as a guillotine museum, fell in love with the Berlin wall when she saw it on television when she was 7.

Asked for the Swedish TV series 100 höjdare (100 Highlights) about the first time she had sex with the Berlin wall, she says that she was 12 or 13, though she is coy about the details of the encounter.

In her bedroom she shows Fredrik Wikingsson the 1:20 scale model of the wall she sleeps with, the sixth such model she built complete with barbed wire.  She also has a fence in her room though ‘he’ is too big to take to bed.

Unlike the many thousand of people celebrating on 9 November 1989, Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer describes the day the wall fell as a ‘catastrophe’.

In Lars Laumann’s film Berlinermuren, which was shown at the 5th Berlin Biennale and propelled her into the media spotlight she elaborates on her feelings about what she feels is the mutilation of her husband and singles out the Hoff for criticism for the part she feels he played:

Shame on you David Hasselhoff – you are nothing without that talking car.

100 höjdare – Berlin Wall Woman (Berlinmurenkvinnan)

Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer isn’t alone in having strong feelings for the wall.  Erika Eiffel is an American who married the Eiffel Tower in 2007 and also has a relationship with the Berlin Wall.

She is the founder of OS Internationale, an organisation for those who are attracted to and have relationships with inanimate objects.

Taboo: In Love With The Berlin Wall