Dark urges driving Charles Lindbergh’s secret double life finally exposed… and how the peculiar obsession lives on

Few have embodied the glamour of progress and modernity quite like the brilliant Charles Lindbergh.

Aviator, engineer, environmentalist, scientist, explorer, military adviser and much else besides, Lindbergh had a genius for being at the leading edge of technological development.

It was his remarkable 3,600-mile, non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927 that first brought him fame and a cult-like following. But such was the breadth of Lindbergh’s achievements that, within the space of a few years, he was one of the most consequential men in the United States.

Today there is a strange echo in another engineer of ambition, perfectionism and huge personal drive.

Like his distinguished predecessor, Elon Musk has a big personal following, influential contacts and uses advanced technology to develop new forms of travel, including electric cars and space rockets.

Yet there is another, much stranger link between the two men: a shared belief in spreading healthy genes around the human population – their own genes in particular.

Obsessed with dwindling birthrates, it is no secret that Musk already has at least 12 children with different partners, has solicited women to have his babies on his social media platform, X, and has spoken of wanting ‘legion-level’ numbers of progeny.

Yet here, too, Lindbergh was ahead of him.

Aviator, engineer, environmentalist, scientist, explorer, military adviser and much else besides, Charles Lindbergh (pictured in 1920) had a genius for being at the leading edge of technological development.

For, despite the restrictive mores of his time, the prudish aviator had no fewer than three secret families in Germany.

The seven children born to him abroad came in addition to the five surviving offspring he fathered back home in America with wife, Anne.

There had been a sixth born in America, of course. But the Lindbergh legacy is indelibly saddened by the catastrophic kidnap and murder of 20-month-old baby Charles Jr in 1932. It remains among the most notorious cases of child abduction in modern history.

Lindbergh’s bizarre gene-spreading project – or ‘the plan’ as he termed it – involved elaborate design and deception.

The mothers were known to each other and well-supported financially. Houses were purchased for them.

The first to give birth was Brigette Hesshaimer, a Bavarian milliner who, in 1958, produced a son called Dyrk. A sister, Astrid, followed in 1960 then David in 1967.

Brigitte’s sister, Marietta, a painter, joined in with two boys, Vago and Christoph, in 1962 and 1966.

Valeska, his private secretary in Europe – based in Baden Baden – gave birth to a son in 1959 and daughter in 1961. Their names remain unknown.

Lindbergh usually visited each family three or four times a year for a few days and wrote to the mothers regularly. Their replies were discreetly mailed to American post office boxes.

Brigitte’s children were told that their father was an American writer called Careu Kent.

Perhaps it is mere coincidence but Lindbergh, like Musk, was keen to control costs. Each of the three German households was required to produce detailed domestic accounts, as was his wife Anne at home in Connecticut.

Although he was a wealthy man, Lindbergh avoided car hire fees and taxis by keeping a Volkswagen near Munich airport. He stayed away from hotels, too. Stocked with food, the Volkswagen was modified so that Lindbergh could sleep in it overnight.

Financially dependent upon him, the mothers seemed happy with the privacy he demanded – which he hoped would continue beyond his death.

Lindbergh adjusted their financial arrangements before he passed away, sent extra money and enjoined all three to maintain the ‘utmost secrecy’. And each family did as he asked – until 1984, when Brigette, the milliner, was approaching the end of her life.

The seven children born to him abroad came in addition to the five surviving offspring he fathered back home in America with wife, Anne (pictured alongside her husband Charles). 

The first to give birth was Brigette Hesshaimer, a Bavarian milliner who, in 1958, produced a son called Dyrk. A sister, Astrid, followed in 1960 then David in 1967. (Pictured: Dyrk, Astrid and David Hesshaimer in 2003). 

Anxious to find out more about her mysterious upbringing, Brigette’s daughter, Astrid, conducted a library search for the author ‘Careu Kent’. She failed to find any such writer, naturally.

Soon afterwards, she discovered Lindbergh’s letters to her mother, which revealed key parts of the story and some clues as to the rest.

Astrid and her siblings investigated further. They recognized ‘Careu Kent’ from published photographs of Lindbergh and established who he really was. They noted that the letters had been signed off with the letter ‘C’, which could have stood for Careu – or Charles.

But it was only when Lindbergh’s wife, Anne, an author and herself an aviator, died in 2001 that Brigitte’s children felt free to contact their half-siblings.

A keen diarist, Anne had clearly known nothing about the secret families and her lack of awareness makes melancholy reading now. The Lindbergh children in America were not, at first, inclined to believe the claims. 

Their late father had always taken a rather staid view of life, after all. But the evidence was strong and, although Lindbergh’s deception shocked and angered his youngest American child, Reeve, she agreed to help uncover the truth.

In Germany, Dyrk, keen to be recognized as Lindbergh’s son, travelled to meet Reeve’s brother, Jon Lindbergh, in Paris.

The two men arranged for DNA testing within the families – and it was finally confirmed that the outlandish story was true.

Other family members – German and American – remained silent about the discovery and continue to do so. But Dyrk cooperated with journalists. Then, in 2005, the story was exposed to the world by German author Rudolf Schröck in his book Das Doppelleben (The Double Life) of Charles A Lindbergh.

An obvious explanation might be that Lindbergh set out to create a complex sexual network. But this makes little sense. So far from being a lifelong philanderer, Lindbergh was a prude. His German ‘plan’ had emerged late in an otherwise puritanical life.

The number of children is also key. Lindbergh told anyone who cared to listen that he wished to have a family of 12, exactly the number of surviving children he eventually produced.

A keen diarist, Anne had clearly known nothing about the secret families and her lack of awareness makes melancholy reading now. The Lindbergh children in America were not, at first, inclined to believe the claims. (Pictured: Anne with her kids Jon, Anne and Land in 1941). 

It is no secret that Elon Musk (pictured with his son X Æ A-Xii) already has at least 12 children with different partners, has solicited women to have his babies on his social media platform, X, and has spoken of wanting ‘legion-level’ numbers of progeny.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

The overwhelming public interest in Charles Lindbergh and his achievements nearly 100 years ago makes even today’s celebrity furores seem tame. 

Vast crowds assembled wherever he was due to land, often blocking the runway and sometimes obliging him to touch down in neighboring fields. 

On his triumphant arrival in Paris in 1927, souvenir hunters stripped the plane, Spirit of St Louis, of anything portable including the precious logbook. 

At civic ceremonies, reporters used hidden microphones or hid under the tables. Entire ‘interviews’ with Lindbergh were made up. 

Eligible daughters and local beauty queens were steered towards him. Lindbergh’s hats disappeared from check-ins and items of laundry went missing at hotels. 

Neither the switchboard nor the staff could be trusted to give him privacy. When he ventured out in the morning, decoy cars were required. 

Even checks signed by Lindbergh could be attractive trophies and were retained – uncashed.

Writing in her 1942 diary, Anne – who was in general agreement with this aim – had listed seven more names for the children yet to come. She had no idea that her husband was determined to achieve the target by other means.

Why? I’m in no doubt that this curious ambition arose from Charles’s old-fashioned eugenic leanings. As a talented man heading a stable family, he felt a duty to the vitality of the human race to father a good number of children – and had frequently said so.

Such attitudes were typical of the 1930s, when ‘positive’ eugenics of this sort were widely accepted. What we can term ‘negative’ eugenics – including the forced sterilization of those deemed unfit to be parents – had taken hold in some American states but Lindbergh had no part in this.

He might even have concluded that his marriage to Anne, eugenically speaking, had defects. His wife, after all, had an alcoholic father and a mentally ill brother. Anne’s sister had died young. Did Lindbergh feel he had married into a family with flawed genes?

As to why the three women should have agreed to such an unconventional arrangement, it is clearly possible that Lindbergh’s fame and the prospect of financial support were influential.

But it is also true that there was a shortage of young men in Germany following the horrific loss of life in the war. There was an added legacy of disability, physical and mental, in many survivors.

Post-war Germany saw a drive for more births and, to help matters, the state tried to make it easier for single women to become mothers. In a bid to reduce the traditional stigma, they were encouraged to find a father’s name to use – even the name of a dead soldier.

Lindbergh’s German recruits took a different approach, but even their colorful ‘plan’ was not quite as unusual as it might sound. Many single German women formed arrangements with foreigners in the post-war years – a practical strategy in a hard situation.

There is one final reason that might have driven Lindbergh to this 20-year deception: as his daughter has noted, he yearned for danger. After a lifetime of extreme risk, Lindbergh was no longer flying by the late 1950s. Was this new double life a compensating thrill?

Back then, Lindbergh’s reputation would have been in tatters had his infidelity been revealed.

It’s an intriguing sign of the times that, today, Elon Musk finds no jeopardy in his own scheme for genetic hegemony.

Not only has the shame of extra-marital sex completely vanished, Musk sees fit to broadcast his bizarre plans on X.

Visionary or not, Lindbergh would have been astounded.

Edited and excerpted from ‘The Enigmatic Aviator: Charles Lindbergh, Revisited’ by David Hamilton.

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