BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
„Oh yeah, that's a bit wild!...“
(Janna)
Extraordinary love
They are uncle and niece!
Claus and Josephinee are married
And have triplets.
Josephine loves her uncle
Together they have triplets.
Josephine loves her uncle.
When Claus sees Josephine for the first time,
She is just a baby and is lying in a stroller.
Josephine is his older brother's daughter.
The two have no contact for years
Until Josephine is 16 years old.
Three years later, the two become a couple.
Their relationship has lasted for 14 years.
The crowning glory of their love:
The birth of triplets Tyson, Flora and Leonidas.
Love is legal in Germany.
Many people see the relationship
As abnormal and immoral -
Even in the village in southern Germany
Where Josephine and Claus live,
There are whispers about it.
The "Tagesspiegel" reports this.
But legally speaking,
The love between uncle and niece
Represents a third degree of kinship.
This means that they are allowed
To marry and have children.
Incest is only spoken of in love relationships
That are first degree relatives,
For example parents and children,
Grandparents and grandchildren or siblings.
When Josephine and Claus decide to get married,
It is legal.
Didn't meet until she were 16.
Josephine only met her uncle Claus
When she was 16
And they hit it off straight away.
When Josephine moved to Tübingen
To study at 19, there was a spark between the two,
As Josephine told the "Tagesspiegel" in an interview.
Claus is 23 years older,
But that doesn't bother them.
It quickly becomes clear
That this is something serious.
The two move in together,
Marry later and have triplets.
They are now seven years old and healthy.
This is not necessarily a given,
Because the risk of a hereditary disease
Is 13 percent for uncles and nieces
Who are blood relatives.
The proportion of malformations in the population
Is normally two to four percent.
You can follow the family happiness
In the Internet.
You see a happy family:
The kids with their school bags,
A photo of the five dressed up for a costume party,
Snapshots of the family outing -
And again and again photos
Of Josephine and Claus in love.
The early days are not easy for the two,
They have to fight against many prejudices.
And even today there are hate comments online
Every now and then,
But for Josephine and Claus only one thing counts:
Love is made of courage.
Married for 14 years & „condemned“:
A love story between niece and uncle.
Josephine and Claus are happily married,
Even have triplets.
Nothing unusual.
But the two are niece and uncle:
The story of a forbidden love.
Sauldorf. Related and in love -
When others ask Josephine Timm
During a familiar chat
How she met her husband,
The 33-year-old usually answers:
I've known him my whole life.
Claus Timm responds the other way around,
Saying that he saw his wife
In the stroller for the first time.
This is how the Timm couple from Sauldorf
Described their getting to know
Other people in the SWR Nachtcafe.
The two are uncle and niece -
And now parents of triplets.
Enjoy every day, you never know
What tomorrow will bring.
Their love is legal in Germany,
But the Timms still had to overcome
A few hurdles before they got married.
The couple has made no secret
Of their extraordinary story
And has spoken openly
About their harmonious relationship
In several TV interviews.
It has now lasted for 14 years.
On a joint Internet account,
The family lets others share in their happiness.
Enjoy every day, you never know
What tomorrow will bring
Is the life motto they want to pass
On to their followers.
Not love at first sight.
It was not love at first sight, however.
When Josephine was still a child,
Claus knew about his niece,
But had hardly any contact with her.
She grew up in East Berlin,
He fled to the West.
It was only when the young woman
Moved near him to study
That they really got to know each other.
And the chemistry seemed to be right,
Initially without any feelings of love.
Claus was still married
To another woman at the time.
But the marriage no longer made him happy.
Divorce followed.
Now both were single.
Josephine and Claus spent more time together.
The first feelings developed
Between uncle and niece.
At first Claus tried to suppress
His conflicting feelings and kept distance.
But after a while the then 41-year-old
Overcame his fears and poured out his heart
To his blood relative,
Who was 23 years younger than him.
He was lucky, the young student
Also felt attracted to her uncle.
It was a good fit right away.
It was as if I had never admitted to myself
Before that I had thought this,
Even though things were so harmonious between us,
Said Josephine Timm.
Same dreams, thoughts and worldview.
The duo are unspokenly on the same wavelength.
They became a couple,
Married three years later
And had three healthy children.
At first, their friends knew nothing
About their relationship.
They knew them as a normal couple.
Josephine's parents were among the first people
To whom the newly-in-love couple came out.
For father Dietmar, Claus' brother,
The relationship was no problem.
He had already thought
That there was more going on.
The mother, with whom Claus Timm went to school,
Also reacted positively to the unusual love.
The family accepted the news.
And when they got married,
Everyone was happy for the newly-weds.
Hatred and accusations of inbreeding.
The two are often confronted
With accusations of inbreeding.
Claus says in an interview
That no one in the village approached him personally,
And that they only whispered
Behind the psychological counselor's back.
He got his intern pregnant,
So he had to marry her now,
The father of the family reveals
One of the rumors
That was widespread at the time.
He got his intern pregnant,
So he had to marry her now.
It was not an easy task to find a registrar.
In the end, the mayor of the village
Married the two, the couple says
In the Stern TV interview.
The couple was also bombarded
With puking emojis and hate messages
On social media. Most of the time
There is just ignorance, counters Josephine.
Despite everyday criticism,
The couple does not regret the decision at all.
You don't want to ask yourself later: What if...?
Explains the qualified psychologist.
Incest is a criminal offense in this country,
The decisive factor is Section 173
Of the Criminal Code (StGB).
It states that sexual intercourse
Between parents and children,
As well as grandparents and grandchildren,
Is punishable, as is intercourse between siblings.
Other degrees of kinship are exempt from this.
This means that the love between Uncle Claus
And his niece Josephine is legal.
Although not well-received in German society,
Love between blood relatives remains.
In other countries, things are different.
In France, Russia, Spain and China,
Even sexual intercourse
Between first-degree relatives
Is not punishable.
In France, for example, the incest law
Was abolished after the French Revolution.
UNUSUAL LOVE.
Uncle and niece have married.
Josephine and Claus Timm:
Married couple holding hands.
Claus Timm saw his current wife Josephine
For the first time when she was lying in the stroller -
Because she is his brother's daughter.
But that doesn't seem to stand in the way of their love.
It's certainly not an everyday love story:
When Claus Timm is 23 years old,
Jis big brother has a daughter - Josephine.
The two are now a couple and happily married.
Josephine and Claus Timm:
Niece and uncle are a couple.
Claus and Josephine are uncle and niece,
But they had no contact for years.
It wasn't until Josephine was 16
That their paths crossed
And they got to know each other -
The chemistry was right.
Three years later they fell in love.
They quickly realized that there was something
Serious between them,
As they revealed to the Tagesspiegel.
Claus and Josephine have now been together
For 14 years, are married
And are parents of triplets.
But they have always had to fight prejudices:
Many people have considered their relationship
Immoral or not normal.
They are also often gossiped about
In the small town in southern Germany
Where they live.
Forbidden love?
When you think of a relationship
Between an uncle and niece,
Many people would probably think of incest.
But incest only refers to relationships
That are first-degree relatives,
Such as parents and children,
Siblings or grandparents and grandchildren.
From a legal point of view,
Claus and Josephine are third-degree relatives.
Accordingly, their love is legal:
They can marry and have children.
No sooner said than done.
Their relationship and the age difference
Have no meaning for them.
They enjoy their happiness
And show this with photos of couples in love
And family snapshots
On their Internet account.
The two of us - it just fits,
It harmonizes perfectly,
It creates harmony.
I'm glad that 14 years ago
We dared to open up to each other
And see each other as the people we are.
Not as boxes that others would like to put us in!
Josephine writes.
The little girl is the daughter of his older brother.
At the time, no one would have guessed
That the baby and the young man
Would one day become lovers.
Your own uncle as a husband?
Very few people can probably imagine that.
It is different for Claus and Josephine,
The two are married
And even have triplets together.
The two have no contact with each other
For many years, and it is only
When Josephine is 16
That they really get to know each other.
The two get together three years later,
And their love has now lasted for 14 years.
Not only have they been married for 11 years,
But they also have triplets
Tyson, Flora and Leonidas together.
You can follow the life of the triplet family
In the Internet: Under the motto
Live an unusual life,
They give insights into their everyday life.
In Germany, their relationship is legal
Because, legally speaking, uncle and niece
Are only related in the third degree.
This means that the two are allowed
To marry and have children.
Incest only applies to love relationships
Between two people who are related
In the first degree, for example
Parents and children or siblings.
Despite this, there is a lot of talk
About the two in the village
In southern Germany where they live.
Some people find their relationship abnormal.
The spark between the two of them flew
When Josephine moved to Tübingen
To study at the age of 19.
The age difference is not important to them.
Both Claus and Josephine quickly realized:
There is something serious between us.
Despite this, the two of them had to fight
Against a lot of prejudice at the beginning
And still receive nasty comments online today.
But the two have an answer
To the negative comments
About their unusual relationship:
Anyone who thinks about their own happiness
(Without harming others, of course)
And doesn't conform to others
Or to what is considered normal,
Is, in our opinion, happier,
More independent and freer.
The two don't want to play hide-and-seek,
They stand by their relationship -
Even if not everyone is happy with it.
Love relationship between uncle and niece:
If it were incest, it would be forbidden.
Josephine and Claus Timm have been a couple
For 14 years and have triplets.
He is her uncle, she is his niece.
About a love that is met with a lot of hate.
When Claus Timm is asked
How he met his wife, he answers:
I saw her lying in the stroller.
When Josephine Timm explains
Why she fell in love with her uncle,
She says: He never felt like family.