Gustave Eiffel the city of Dijon, Côte-d'Or, the first child of Catherine-Mélanie (née Moneuse) and Alexandre Bönickhausen (). He was a descendant of Jean-René Bönickhausen, who had emigrated from the German town of Marmagen and settled in Paris at the beginning of the 18th century. The family adopted the name Eiffel as a reference to the Eifel mountains in the region from which they had come. Although the family always used the name Eiffel, Gustave's name was registered at birth as Bonickhausen dit Eiffel, and was not officially changed to Eiffel until 1880. At the time of Gustave's birth his father, an
Erika Eiffel competition bow, helped her to become a world-class archer. She first encountered the Eiffel Tower in 2004, and felt an immediate attraction. She told ABC News that she and others "[...] feel an innate connection to objects. It comes perfectly normal to us to connect on various levels, emotional, spiritual and also physical for some." In April 2009, on the second anniversary of her marriage to the Eiffel Tower, she appeared on "Good Morning America" and explained how her object love empowered her. Her twenty-year relationship with the Berlin Wall inspired the musical theater production "Erika's Wall". In 2011 a