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Kilius started her successful national career at the age of nine with her partner Franz Nigel at the German championships in 1952. With him she became the first German youth champion in pair skating. Two years later, the ice pair won the title of runner-up at the German championships. In 1955 the German championship was successful; Marika Kilius, just thirteen years old, took first place with her partner. In the following two years she continued to dominate the German scene in this discipline. They won the championship title again in a row in 1956 and 1957.
In 1955, the young Marika Kilius took part in the European Championships and immediately took third place in pair skating. This made it one of the best in Europe. She repeated this success the following year. In the same year, 1956, she achieved a double triumph as she also came third at the World Championships. The following year she changed her skating partner. In 1957 she ran with Hans-Jürgen Bäumler, with whom she was to have even more success. Above all, the couple won their way into the hearts of the German audience. They were often referred to as the German dream couple on the ice. Kilius continued her series of sporting successes with her new partner Bäumler in 1959.
She became German champion with him. In the same year she was able to celebrate another title, becoming European champion in pair skating for the first time. The couple also presented themselves with the best quality of performance in the period that followed. By 1964, Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler, the German ice skating dream couple, had become German and European champions six times in a row. In 1960 they took part in the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. They immediately won silver at this international competition. At the World Championships in the same year, Marika Kilius came third in pair skating.
They repeated this title success at the next Winter Olympics in 1964 in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1966 they voluntarily returned this medal because of the questioned amateur status. Their big competitors from the Soviet Union, the pair Belusova and Protopopov, became world champions. Marika Kilius and her partner Bäumler had long been among the world's best and in Germany she became the sports idol of the 1960s. They crowned their successful sporting year in 1964 with a brilliant victory at the World Championships in Dortmund. And the year before, at the World Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, they won the title of the world's best figure skating pair for the first time.
Marika Kilius and her partner switched to professional sports after 1964 and had numerous appearances in various ice revues such as "Holliday on Ice", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1968), "Im Weißen Rößl" (1969) or " "The Mask in Blue" (1970). Marika Kilius and her partner also made ice skating films such as "The Great Freestyle" and the film "The Great Happiness". In 1982, Marika Kilius and her partner Bäumler ended their active careers in figure skating. Kilius was still active as a successful figure skater in show business and worked as a singer. For example, in 1964 she sang the title "When the Cowboys Dream" and came third in the top ten in Germany. After her active sports career, Marika Kilius works as a real estate agent.
