Lindbergh’s love children

last updated 8 January 2015

Munich

Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh had a German lover who bore him three children, a woman claiming to be his daughter said this week. Astrid Bouteuil told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Lindbergh fell in love with her mother, Brigitte Hesshaimer, on a visit to Germany in 1957, when he was 55 and Brigitte was 31. Over the years, Lindbergh visited often, though he never learned German and had to read bedtime stories to his kids in English. Preliminary analysis of Bouteuil’s evidence—dozens of letters from Lindbergh and photos of him with her and her two brothers—suggests her claim is authentic. Hesshaimer, who died in 1999, made the children swear not to reveal who their father was until after her death. Lindbergh also had five children with his American wife.