Incestuous Couple: "We've Done Nothing Wrong"

by Jordan Yerman | March 6, 2007 at 11:55 pm

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A German couple, brother and sister by birth but raised separately, have four children together. The courts took custody of the kids while the case gets sorted out, as incest is a criminal offense in Germany, and the brother has already done time in prison for this. The prosecution argues its case based on existing moral principles and the high rate of birth defects among incestuously conceived children. But what if there were no children involved? What if, as the brother has since done, the man gets a vasectomy?

Also, this couple was not raised as brother and sister; they met as adults, but society treats them as such. Should the law be changed? Did familial love stand a chance against romantic love in this case?

Patrick, who is 30 years old, was adopted and, as a child, he lived in Potsdam.

He did not meet his mother and biological family until he was 23. He travelled to Leipzig with a friend in 2000, determined to make contact with his other relatives.

He met his sister Susan for the first time, and according to the couple, after their mother died, they fell in love.

As an actor I performed in a John Ford play called 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, a hyper-violent Jacobean drama about a guy who pines after his sister, and, when she marries another guy, kills her and her new husband. The subject matter is extreme even by today's standards, but the Ford did a bang-up job in arguing the brother's side of the story. Fans of literature, blank verse, incest, and violence should check it out, since the themes therein are evidently still pertinent.