Ludowika Jakobsson-Eilers

Ludowika Eilers met her partner and future husband Walter Jakobsson in 1907, while he was studying engineering in Berlin. They started to skate together and at their first World Championships, in 1910, won a silver medal. At the 1911 World Championships Jakobson and Eilers won their first World Title. They repeated their World Championships victory in 1914 and 1923, while taking silver at the 1912, 1913 and 1922 World Championships. In 1920 at the Antwerp Olympic Games the Jakobssons won easily, being placed first by all judges, with Ludovika Jakobsson the only German-born athlete at the Antwerp Olympics. At the 1st Winter Olympic Games in 1924 the Jakobssons took the silver medal and they made their last international appearance at the 1928 Olympics, where they finished fifth.

They won only two Finnish pairs titles, in 1911 and 1921, but Ludowika Jakobsson was the Finnish ladies’ singles champion in 1917. After their 1911 World Championship the pair married and lived in Berlin until 1916. In 1916 they moved to Helsinki, where Walter Jakobsson started work as a technical director of Kone OY (now Konecranes), which now is one of the World’s leading manufacturers of cranes, while Ludowika starred in a couple of Finnish silent films in 1920s.