By B. John Zavrel
Charles Lindbergh's daughter Astrid (left) talks about the most interesting secret life of her father, the American hero. It was his destiny to love several women at the same time in Germany and Austria. Only in Germany Lindbergh had three mistress and seven children, it is reported.
New York / Berlin (bpb) Charles Lindbergh had a secret life. The German TV Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen and the BILD Zeitung of Axel-Springer-Verlag Hamburg discovered in June 2005: Lindbergh had in Germany after World War II seven children with three different women. One of his lovers was the beauty Brigitte Hesshaimer in Munich. Lindbergh, the American Hero, loved Germany and Bavaria. With Hesshaimer he had three children, it is reported. One of them is Astrid Bouteil (44). She lives in France and has now made the secret life of her beloved father public.
We remember: Charles Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 to August 26, 1974), an American aviator, made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. He was just 25 years old. On May 20, Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, near New York City, at 7:52 a.m. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on May 21 at 10:21 p.m. Paris time (5:21 p.m. New York time). Thousands of cheering people had gathered to meet him. He had flown more than 3,600 miles (5,790 kilometres) in 33 1/2 hours. Lindbergh's heroic flight thrilled people throughout the world. He was honoured with awards, celebrations, and parades.
The sculptor Arno Breker saw Lindbergh's aeroplane in the sky at his arrival in Paris. Breker was 27 years old. In Europe, Lindbergh was invited by the governments of France and Germany to tour the aircraft industries of their countries. Lindbergh was especially impressed with the highly advanced aircraft industry of Nazi Germany. In 1938, Hermann Goering, Luftwaffenminister (Minister of military aircraft) in Adolf Hitler Government, presented Lindbergh with a German medal of honour. Lindbergh's acceptance of the medal caused an outcry in the United States among critics of Nazism.
In Berlin Lindbergh visited the famous sculptor Arno Breker at his official Studio at Käuzchensteig in Berlin Grunewald. In the meantime, since 1930 Breker became the Nr. 1 sculptor--before Josef Thorak, Georg Kolbe, Fritz Klimsch, Richard Scheibe, Adolf Wackerle, Ernst Barlach, Käthe Kollwitz and others. Breker was working on a Relief "THE FLIGHT OF ICARUS". Lindbergh studied the legend of the relief and said at the end: "Dear Arno, there is missing something. The fall of the Ikarus." It is reported: Arno Breker smiled and said: Mr. Lindbergh: my Ikarus never falls.
Lindbergh saw in Berlin in 1938 Arno Breker working on this relief IKARUS. The art-work was reserved for an official building in the planned German metropolis Germania. The architect Albert Speer had Adolf Hitler's support to build a Reichshauptstadt (German Capital) better than Rome, Paris and Washington. To Breker's assistants in the art-studio belonged during the NS-Time his pupils Bernhard Heiliger, Gregor Kruck, Manfred Welzel and Erwin A. Schinzel.
The catastrophe: Charles Augustus, Jr. kidnapping
On March 1, 1932, the Lindbergh's' 20-month-old son, Charles Augustus, Jr., was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey. About ten weeks later, his body was found. In 1934, police arrested a carpenter Bruno Richard Hauptman and charged him with the murder. Hauptman was convicted of the crime. He was executed in 1936. In 1935, after the Hauptman trial, Lindbergh, his wife, and their 3-year-old son, Jon, moved to Europe in search of privacy and safety.
Lindbergh fell in love with Europe and especially with Germany in 1927. After 1945 he returned again and again as a private man to West Germany and Austria. He would spend several months a year with his mistress. At the same time, he led a family life in USA.
Lindbergh's daughter Astrid remembers her childhood in 1960's in Bavaria: "He was very nice to me. My mother was always extremely happy and relaxed when he was with us." Her mother said to the children, "Papa" is a writer and has not the time to be always at home." Astrid Boatel said in an interview, she knew her "father" under the name Care Kent. Later she found out in documents of her late mother the real background of this German-American family.
Astrid Bouteil keeps her father in good memory. She named her own son Charly. 'He and my daughter Isabelle have certain characteristics of their American grandfather. Charly wasa pilot in the Army and become an engineer. Both look a bit like the grandfather', she said.
© PROMETHEUS 96/2005