Be my (broken-hearted) Valentine

What becomes of a garden gnome hurl­ed in fury at a car during a stormy break-up? A teddy bear that was once a Valentine’s Day present? A wedding dress from a marriage gone awry? An axe that smashed through household furniture?

Each item comes with dates and locations of the relationships and notes by their anonymous donors

All are on display at the Museum of Broken Relationships in the Croatian capital Zagreb, each with written testimonies telling tales of passion, romance and heartbreak.

On Valentine’s Day, the museum sees its visits almost double.

“The objects that are here represent all the stages of a break-up ... and how people go through love,” said Drazen Grubisic, a designer and artist who co-founded the museum in 2010.

“We might say it’s a love museum, just upside down.”

The mementoes – collected from all over the world – are random and varied, ranging from fake rubber breasts to a cast from a broken leg. Each item comes with dates and locations of the relationships, and notes by their anonymous donors.

Some are funny. The note next to a garter belt says: “I never put them on. The relationship might have lasted longer if I had.”

Some are bitter. The garden gnome flew over a car driven by a husband who turned “arrogant and heartless.” It bounced on the asphalt, shattering its face.

“It was a long loop, drawing an arc of time ... that defined the end of love,” the note from Slovenia said.

An axe from Berlin was used by a woman to smash every piece of furniture her girlfriend had left behind.

“The more the room filled with chopped furniture, (the more) I felt better.”

The text by a blue Frisbee reads: “Darling, should you ever get the ridiculous idea to walk into a cultural institution like a museum for the first time in your life, you’ll remember me.”

The museum, opposite Zagreb’s City Hall where couples get married, currently displays some 100 “relics” out of about 1,000 that have been collected from around the world.

Parts of the collection have travelled as far as Manila, London and Singapore to be put on display. In each city, the heartbroken can donate their stuff to the Zagreb museum.

A prosthetic leg currently showcased at the National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford, Lincs, was donated by a war veteran who fell in love with his physiotherapist. A note says it lasted longer than the relationship because it was made of “sturdier material”.

The museum itself is the brainchild of a break-up.

When Mr Grubisic and co-founder Olinka Vistica, a film-maker, split up, they got stuck when it came to ­dividing their sentimental memorabilia. They did not want to just get rid of it, so they created a museum.

“Maybe sometime in your life you will want to remember some of the good parts of the relationship,” Mr Grubisic said. He said that donors of mementoes find the giving therapeutic.

“They can move on,” he said. “They also show there’s something universal: We all have been broken-hearted at least once.”

On the opposite page are the stories behind two of the exhibits.

An Ex Axe

1995 Berlin – Germany

She was the first woman that I let move in with me. All my friends thought I needed to learn to let people in more. A few months after she moved in, I was offered to travel to the US. She could not come along. At the airport we said goodbye in tears, and she was assuring me she could not survive three weeks without me. I returned after three weeks, and she said: “I fell in love with someone else. I have known her for just four days, but I know that she can give me everything that you cannot.”

I was banal and asked about her plans regarding our life together. The next day she still had no answer, so I kicked her out. She immediately went on holiday with her new girlfriend while her furniture stayed with me. Not knowing what to do with my anger, I finally bought this axe at Karstadt to blow off steam and to give her at least a small feeling of loss – which she obviously did not have after our break-up.

In the 14 days of her holiday, every day I axed one piece of her furniture. I kept the remains there, as an expression of my inner condition. The more her room filled with chopped furniture acquiring the look of my soul, the better I felt. Two weeks after she left, she came back for the furniture. It was neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood. She took that trash and left my apartment for good. The axe was promoted to a therapy instrument.

Divorce Day Mad Dwarf

20 years – Ljubljana, Slovenia

The divorce day garden dwarf. He arrived in a new car. Arrogant, shallow and heart­less. The dwarf was clos­ing the gate that he had destroyed himself some time ago.

At that moment it flew over to the wind­screen of the new car, rebounded and landed on the asphalt surface. It was a long loop, draw­ing an arc of time – and this short long arc de­fined the end of love.