GERMANY HAS lost one of its best-known cult characters with the death of Molly Luft, the self-described “fattest prostitute in Berlin”.
For half a century Luft, real name Edda Blanck, worked as a prostitute before opening her own brothel in West Berlin. She retired in 2004, after an estimated 90,000 customers, claiming she was getting too old for the oldest profession. On Wednesday she lost her battle with cancer.
She was born in 1944 in Pomerania, now in Poland, where her earliest memories are of her mother feeding her “lots of meringues and whipped cream”.
It was the start of an eating disorder that would plague her all her life. Her mother died when Edda was nine and, with no father in sight, she ended up in a children’s home.
Already struggling with weight problems as a teenager, she finished school and began working as a radio saleswoman before she met her future husband, Achim.
They had two children but split up after he developed an alcohol problem. She got married again, to Archibald, an American soldier, and remembers ending the wedding day in bed with her husband, the bridesmaid and the best man.
It was Archibald who insisted she work as a prostitute, she claimed later. She continued to overeat – her favourite foods were honey-roast pork and champagne truffles – and soon the 5ft tall woman weighed 170kg (27 stone).
She made her weight her speciality to attract regular customers, one of whom wrote a song dedicated to her, titled: We Love Every One Of Her Kilos.
In the 1980s she made the breakthrough into the German mainstream and soon – with her huge figure, turquoise eye shadow and pink wig – she was a regular on television talkshows.
As the years passed, and custom slackened, Luft lowered her prices to stay in business.
“We’ve brought the Aldi principle to prostitution,” she said in January 2004 of new loyalty cards and birthday rates.
Months later, however, Germany’s economic downturn had taken its toll.
She told The Irish Times:"I want to get out next year.
“Everything’s more difficult today, you have to work with all sorts of tricks to get on.”
She sold her brothel and opened a bar, which failed to take off, and went back to the sex trade earlier this year.
She was diagnosed with colon cancer and, on Wednesday, she died of coronary failure in her sleep.