Merry German widower still looking for love on 100th birthday

Berlin artist Gerhard Finke had just one wish for his 100th birthday on Friday: a new girlfriend. But please no applicants any younger than 90.

"Anything above that is fine, though she has to be pretty, not in looks but in spirit," he told Germany's Bild newspaper.

Mr Finke was a soldier in the second World War when he met his future wife, Gretlein, on a train in 1944. They married, moved to Düsseldorf, had three children and Mr Finke pursued his career as an artist. After six decades together, Gretlein died in 2008.

The widower said he was in no mood for romance when Trudi, a merry widow of 90, stopped him on the street one day.

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“Gretlein wasn’t even two years dead and I told her I wasn’t ready for an adventure with a stranger,” he said. But Trudi kept at him and, two weeks later, Gerhard moved in.

“The first kiss was incredible,” he remembers. “We had a combined age of 182.”

Young chicken

They were together five years until Trudi died in 2014. Gerhard decided to move back to Berlin, where Cupid struck a third time. Shortly after the move, he fell for a “young chicken”: 70-year-old Erika, but it wasn’t to be.

He was too romantic and she was too intelligent, he admits, and, after a year together, she broke it off three weeks ago.

“I’m still a bit sad but you can’t cling to the past,” he said. “I live for today and leave yesterday be. Perhaps that’s why I’ve held things together.”

Instead of dwelling on the past, he has concentrated on his work.

He has painted over 8,000 works in his lifetime, he estimates, with his most productive time from 2-6am.

But after three long weeks as a single man, the Berlin centenarian says he’s ready for lover number four to share his life and his lunch at his favourite Italian restaurant.

“I could fall for another woman who still has a lust for life,” he said, “and who has lines that reflect her entire life: wonderful, I could really fall in love.”