Dietlinde Eckhart

Eckhart begins as an unassuming, soft-spoken German woman of about thirty. That composed exterior does not hold. Forcing her way through the Gate warps her body in a violent mutation, and by her final return she is twisted almost past recognition, swallowed in the Gate's black miasma and left with a voice no longer clearly male or female.

On the surface Eckhart is measured and quietly spoken, presenting her crusade as nothing more than a bid to steady a nation in turmoil. Beneath the calm runs a ruthless ambition; she feels little for anyone else, staying unmoved as Hohenheim is tormented and firing on both Edward and Haushofer without a shred of remorse. Once she glimpses the world beyond the Gate, her true aim surfaces, and she casts off any pretense of serving Germany in favor of conquest. The Gate's influence and her sudden alchemical power finally shatter her mind, reducing her to a paranoid wreck bent on wiping out an entire world.

Little is recorded of Eckhart's early life, which lends her an air of mystery. As chairman of the Thule Society she wields real influence, and it is that standing that brings her into contact with Hohenheim, who claims both a deep grasp of alchemy, which she calls magic, and origins in another world. Convinced that weapons from this Shamballa could rescue her upheaval-torn homeland and smooth the Nazi Party's rise, she presses Hohenheim into unwilling service after abducting him and drives the society to breach the Gate. An early attempt using a captured dragon, in truth the homunculus Envy, opens the passage only long enough to send scouts who return dead.

A second effort, powered by Alfons Heiderich's rockets and Hohenheim's sacrifice, holds the Gate open long enough for Eckhart and a fleet of airships to cross into Amestris. The passage mutates her and unlocks the alchemy she had only dabbled in, but it also unhinges her, and she reaches Central City set on annihilating everything there. Edward stows away aboard her flagship, where she admits she is driven by terror of a power she cannot master and a conviction that his world will one day invade hers. Unable to talk her down, he is joined by Alphonse, and together the brothers defeat her, hurling her and her army back to Earth. Returned and utterly mad, she demands another chance to cross over and tries to compel Noah to reopen the Gate, until that world's counterpart of Maes Hughes guns her down, an act that restores her human form as she dies.