Bettina Dorfmann was six years old when her parents gave the little girl her very first Barbie doll back in 1967. "She wasn't just a doll, either, but a friend," Dorfmann remembers. "As it turned out, she was a friend for life," Dorfmann told DW. Today, the Dusseldorf collector who made it to the Guinness Book of World Records owns more Barbies than anyone else in the world — 18,000 dolls!

Even as a child, Dorfmann had almost three dozen Barbies. When she lost interest and stopped playing with them one day, they ended up in the family's attic. Only when her own daughter began to play with dolls did she pull them out of storage.

Dorfmann became increasingly known among collectors. She soon began repairing the dolls, too, at Germany's only Barbie repair workshop, the "Barbie Clinic."

In addition, she began to organize Barbie-themed exhibitions that were highly successful in Germany and beyond. She packed up her dolls and went on tour for nine years, first across China for two and a half years, and then throughout Europe.

Today, Dorfmann works at the Doll and Toy Museum in the western German city of Ratingen. She loans rare Barbie dolls for various events, has written five books and many articles in trade journals, and is an overall authority on the Barbie doll.

According to dw.com