Late news from Barcelona reveals another German fiction going round the world: the story that the world’s first sex doll was invented by the Nazis for their troops.
The story started as a website with a German and ‘English’ page (links to current version).

Jens Baumeister has followed its path to international fame (in German).

The Wehrmacht are claimed to have wanted to keep this top secret, and they certainly succeeded until that website appeared. Thereafter began its voyage to fame on the Web.

This started when Ariel Magnus of taz used the story as a hook (? Aufhänger) for a long article on sex dolls, which started with Borghild, continued with Real Dolls in the USA (I didn’t look at their site, as you have to be over 18) and reached its climax in Andy the android, of Nuremberg of all places, despite the name a woman (like Borghild, Andy resurfaced in BILD a few days later on 20 April).

There then appeared a number of articles, first in German then in English. All seemed to be based on the one website, since the website misspelt the name of Joachim Mrugowsky and so did they. So there’s no other evidence available. BILD did the usual thing of milking the story for all it was worth, only to quote an expert saying there is no evidence.

Just two English versions: Boing Boing and Secular Blasphemy.

Baumeister shows the site was altered and photos described as originals later described as reconstructions.

Baumeister finds the domain borghild.de registered in the name of Mike Cospro in Neumarkt. The name sounds invented and is not in the Neumarkt phone book (there is a cosmetics firm of that name, but presumably that is an amalgamation of COSmetics and PROfessional).

There is an email address on the Borghild site, but I haven’t tried it.

Borghild indeed – the very name sounds like a hoax (said to have been coined by a Danish Nazi, in place of the German Burghild, but sounds like a play on ‘borgen’ – to lend or borrow). I wonder if someone spelt Burghild wrong when they bought the domain?