For her afternoon nap, she slept in Matthias’ bed; he temporarily moved to the guest bed to make space for her. Jennifer was a friendly and straightforward little girl, and she seemed to feel comfortable with the Siebers. At the end of the day, before they took Jennifer back to Salberg House, they asked the three-year-old, “Do you want to come live with us?” Jennifer said yes.
Inge Sieber went shopping with her sons to prepare for Jennifer’s arrival. She bought a milk mug and asked Matthias and Manuel who it might be for. “For the little girl who is going to be our new sister soon,” the boys replied.
On October 22, 1973, Inge Sieber collected Jennifer from Salberg House for the last time—to take her home. She was given Jennifer’s health record with details of her vaccinations and which childhood diseases she’d had. Sister Magdalena gave her a collection of photographs. But one thing Jennifer did not have after three years in a children’s home was a favorite stuffed animal or security blanket of her own.
Inge Sieber remembers: “The first thing I did was to take Jenny for a little walk. We went to the butcher’s, and when he handed her a slice of pepperoni she beamed at him.”
Frau Sieber was amazed at how “happy and mature” Jennifer was. She had been expecting a shy, traumatized, institutionalized child, but “Jenny was more confident and more independent than my own sons. She knew her way around everyday life. The social workers at Salberg House had prepared her well; they had taken the children grocery shopping in the village, for example.”
One thing was unusual, however: At first, Jennifer would not leave Inge Sieber’s side. She followed her foster mother wherever she went, even to the bathroom.
According to Inge Sieber, Jennifer was an inquisitive child, hungry for knowledge. When she saw Matthias and Manuel’s toys, she asked: “Whose are those?” Inge Sieber replied: “They belong to all three of you.”
Jennifer’s older brother Matthias says that he and his brother were excited about their new playmate and that they liked her instantly. They never felt any jealousy toward their new sister, he adds.
Gerhard Sieber built triple bunk beds for the children. Jennifer slept in the bottom bunk; Manuel, who was about the same age as her, slept in the middle, and Matthias, who was one year older, slept on top. A photo from those early days shows all three of them laughing in their bunks: the two small, blond Sieber boys in red-and-blue striped pajamas, and thin, tall Jennifer in a nightdress made from the same material.
Every year on October 22, the anniversary of Jennifer’s arrival in Waldtrudering, the family would give her a little present. “October twenty-second was something like Jennifer’s name day for us,” Inge Sieber explains.
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I LOVE THAT PHOTO of the three of us in matching nightclothes, on the bunk beds.
After Inge and Gerhard had put us to bed, we would have our stuffed animals and dollies talk to each other for a while: Manuel’s teddy—Grizzly—would growl, Matthias’s teddy Rascal would interrupt, and Jimmy, my dark-skinned doll, would also chime in. When we were tired, we would call out “Good–night–ev–ry–bo–dy!” We would take turns calling out the syllables one by one, and nobody was allowed to talk after that.
In another photo, we are standing proudly beneath the cross that stands at the summit of a mountain in the Austrian Alps, dressed in lederhosen and climbing boots.
My brothers and I became a unit very quickly. I felt very close to them immediately, and I still do today.
Having stayed at home with Inge for the first few weeks after my arrival in Waldtrudering, I soon wanted to join my new brothers at their preschool. I joined the same group as Manuel. In the mornings, the three of us trotted off together, collecting our friends on the way. Even though we were quite young, we usually went on our own. On the way home we always had to prove our courage: We would dare each other to walk closely along a fence, from behind which a big dog—we called him Buddy—would bark at us. My brothers would often send me ahead—I was the bravest of the three.
Waldtrudering is a quiet, middle-class suburb of Munich—a purely residential area where most of the dwellings are one-family homes surrounded by large gardens. The streets are named after German colonies and birds: Togo Street, Cameroon Street, Grouse Way, Birdsong Close. There are hardly any stores or businesses. It caused a stir when a McDonald’s opened on the arterial highway that links Waldtrudering to downtown Munich.
For the first few years we lived in a first-floor apartment; then we moved to a single-family home. The rooms were small and full of nooks and crannies. The hallway and stairs were unheated; when you opened a door, ice-cold air would gush in.
In the new house, my brothers and I had a playroom for messy games, but mostly we would play outside in the fresh air. In the summer months, the garden would burst into flower, and a hammock would be strung between two trees. There was a soccer field not far from the house, and a hill. In the winter, we would meet up with other children from the neighborhood and go tobogganing down the hill, tumbling and shrieking with joy. In the evening we would collapse into our beds, hoarse and exhausted.
At the end of the road were fields and meadows, and beyond them lay the woods. We played hide-and-seek there, rode our bikes around, started a club, and built dens in the woods.
My adoptive parents took us children on mushroom-picking courses, where we were taught how to identify the various species of mushrooms found in the woods. For vacations we would go mountain-climbing in Austria or camping in Italy, usually with Inge’s parents: our Oma Vienna and her husband.
I saw my mother less and less. In the beginning, she would bring me back to her place every so often, or take me to my grandmother Irene’s. I only remember fragments of those meetings, but one occasion is still very fresh in my mind: My mother had collected me from my adoptive parents in Waldtrudering. We were in the car, driving toward Hasenbergl, the district in the north of Munich where my mother lived. We didn’t talk much, and I spent most of the journey looking out the window. Then the first apartment buildings came into sight, rows of gray, uniform structures interspersed with public lawns.
When we reached the edge of the neighborhood, my mother parked her car. We got out and walked to her apartment. She darted ahead; I followed, dragging my weekend bag behind me. My mother opened the door, and we were greeted by her barking dog.
Before I had even entered the hall, my mother tossed the dog’s leash to me and yelled: “Go take him for a walk!” Anxiously I set off. Outside, I hid from the children who were playing between the clotheslines. I hardly knew them, but they had teased me and called me “pickaninny” on previous occasions.
When I returned with her mutt, my mother dropped onto the sofa and lit a cigarette. She was still angry with me for taking the dog out only grudgingly. I sat down with her and asked: “Hey, Mama, what’s up?” “Nothing’s up,” my mother replied.
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Before they took Jennifer in, the Siebers had never spoken to Monika Goeth; they only knew about her from Jennifer’s CPS file.
After Jennifer came to live with the Siebers, Monika Goeth would call them every now and then and arrange dates to collect Jennifer for a visit, or a visit with her grandmother. The Siebers, in turn, would inform Monika Goeth when anything had happened, such as when Jennifer had her tonsils out. They would give her notice before long family holidays, too.
Now, Jennifer had two “mamas,” her foster mother, Inge Sieber, and her biological mother, Monika Goeth.
Inge and Gerhard Sieber had thought about what their foster daughter should call them. Their sons called them “Mama” and “Papa,” and soon Jennifer did the same. Inge Sieber would refer to Monika Goeth as “the other mama,” as in, “the other mama has got to go to work, that’s why you’re with us now.”
Ruth Irene Goeth visited her granddaughter’s foster family once, and the Siebers got on well with her. Monika Goeth, however, would come only to the front door when she picked Jennifer up. Inge Sieber
never asked her inside. She found Monika Goeth to be reserved, and wasn’t able to warm to her.
Today, Inge Sieber cannot understand why she never talked to Monika Goeth about her daughter, especially because Jennifer was often restless and troubled after spending a weekend with her mother. “She never told us much about it,” Inge Sieber says, “she only ever mentioned her grandmother or her mother’s dog.”
She recalls that once Monika Goeth did not even come in person to return her four-year-old daughter to her foster family; instead she sent the little girl back in a taxicab on her own.
When Jennifer was six years old, Monika Goeth was expecting a child with her then-husband Hagen. She consented to give Jennifer up for adoption—but not by any family, only by the Siebers.
Since Inge Sieber was not a German national—she is Austrian—the adoption process dragged on for nearly a year. Inge Sieber had to provide a number of references; friends and acquaintances testified that they thought she would do a good job.
For Jennifer and other children of her age, adoption was a complicated and abstract concept. One of Jennifer’s little friends told her: “My mommy says that you’re bedopted now, no, I mean redopted.” And once, when Inge Sieber explained to Jennifer that it would have been physically impossible for her to give birth to Jennifer, because Manuel was only six months older, Jennifer reacted with a child’s logic: “Then it’s lucky that I was adopted, otherwise I wouldn’t even have been born!”
Over the following three years, Monika Goeth kept sending letters and presents to her daughter, but Jennifer’s adoptive parents only passed some of them on to her. When Monika Goeth heard nothing back from her daughter, she wrote a letter to the Siebers, asking if it was OK for her to get in touch every now and then, to keep sending letters and presents.
No, they replied—would she please refrain from contacting Jennifer? The girl was too torn between her natural and her adoptive family. It should wait until she was older.
They never heard from Monika Goeth again.
Inge Sieber recalls that it didn’t occur to her or her husband to stay in touch with Jennifer’s biological mother after the adoption. “We thought that a clean break would be in Jenny’s best interest. It was a no-brainer for us: on the day of the adoption, she became our daughter.”
Jennifer Teege and her adoptive brother Matthias on a hiking trip in the mountains
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ON PAPER, I WAS A SIEBER NOW. In second grade I wrote a different name on my schoolbooks than I had in first grade. But my mother still belonged to me.
My adoptive parents thought it was best to act as if I really was their own child, as if I had always been theirs.
Yet our story together didn’t begin until I was three. I came to them as a Goeth, and they were the Siebers. After the adoption, it was as if my mother had never existed. Suddenly, all contact with her stopped. She no longer called or came to pick me up for the weekend. What had happened? Had she forgotten about me?
My adoptive parents didn’t say anything, or encourage me to talk about it. Quite the opposite: Inge and Gerhard seemed glad that I wasn’t asking questions.
All they wanted was a normal family.
I didn’t dare ask. Was I even allowed to? Wouldn’t that mean that I was questioning my new parents? I wanted to belong to the Siebers. When they asked me, at age six, if I wanted to be adopted by them, I said yes.
All I wanted was a normal family, too.
Almost all the photos of my childhood show me laughing: buried in the sand on a beach in Italy, skiing with my brothers, eating ice cream, at the Oktoberfest.
Nevertheless, the smiling photographs don’t tell the whole truth.
Early on, I knew: I was different. Different from Inge and Gerhard, my brothers, and the other children. A quick look in the mirror was enough.
Inge and Gerhard talked about me as “our daughter.” I know they meant well, but often it was too much. At those words, others would stare at me, mouths agape, obviously asking themselves, “How can that be?” I pretended not to notice their surprised faces.
My childhood photos, the ones I like so much, all show two fair children and a dark one.
In the street, children sometimes called me names such as “Negerbub”—“black boy”—mistaking me for a boy due to my height and short, curly hair. I would quickly retort, “I am a mixed-race girl!” At birthday parties I always hoped nobody would look at me when they were handing out the Mallomars, which were called “Negro’s Kisses” in Germany at the time.
At my preschool, I was the only child with dark skin, but in elementary school I met two girls who looked like me: sisters, their father black, their mother white. Just like me. I dreaded the thought that others might lump us together, so I kept my distance on the playground.
Later, in high school, there were two more dark-skinned, adopted children. Maybe I could have discussed my experience with them, but we only talked about everyday things. I had already internalized the silence.
My husband once suggested that we could take in a foster child. I don’t know if I’d be able to cope with that. If we did, I would choose a child with darker skin, one who would look more like my own children, and be more likely to feel that they “fit in.”
My adoptive parents were idealists. They did not worry about appearances; they just wanted to give a child a second chance. The first family I was introduced to rejected me because of my height; that would have been inconceivable for Inge and Gerhard.
I called Inge and Gerhard “Mama” and “Papa,” just like my brothers did. At the time, those words rolled easily off my tongue. Once I became a mother myself, I started calling them “Oma Inge” and “Opa Gerhard.” It felt more suitable. They loved being grandparents and were totally taken up by their new role.
After finding the book about my mother, I stopped calling them Mama and Papa. I felt it was important to distinguish between them and my biological parents.
As a young child, I could never say “adoptive parents” without feelings of shame; I never described myself as an “adoptive daughter.” The word “adoptive” sounded like a flaw. I was uncertain of exactly what it meant, but I knew it was something awkward. I could look at the adoption certificate whenever I wanted—it was kept with other important documents in the desk—but we never talked about it in the family.
The adoption became a taboo subject.
I didn’t even discuss my mother with my brothers, although we had a very close relationship: They were simply my brothers. With them, I could just be myself.
It was easier for them. Unlike my adoptive parents, they did not have to replace my natural parents, to compete with my mother.
Much is expected of foster and adoptive parents—to be and do everything that natural parents would, to become a strange child’s mother and father as soon as the child arrives. Yet it takes time to grow into that role. In the beginning sympathy may prevail, as they feel sorry for the vulnerable little creature that has suddenly come to live under their roof. But getting to know the child’s personality, and growing together as a family, takes time.
I did not take my adoptive parents’ affection for granted. I was afraid I might lose it again.
Inge and Gerhard have always asserted that they love the three of us all the same. But I don’t think that’s possible. It is possible to love every child, but in different ways.
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The younger of Jennifer Teege’s adoptive brothers, Manuel, claims that he never saw Jennifer as his “adoptive sister.” “She is my sister. Jenny has been with us for as long as I can remember.” According to Matthias, her older brother, her adoption was in fact discussed, “but always in retrospect: That’s how it was in the children’s home, and then she came to live with us. The question of how Jenny might be feeling about it, or what her mother might be going through, was never addressed.”
The subject was avoided, says Matthias, because it would have put a question mark over the sibl
ings’ equality. “That was our dogma: Everyone is treated equally. I only realized later that that wasn’t the case.” In reality, his parents had more trouble with Jennifer than with the boys. “They would argue a lot, partly because Jennifer was a girl. Our mother applied two different yardsticks; she was less tolerant with Jennifer. On the other hand, Jennifer could be undiplomatic. She would provoke our parents or rub them the wrong way.”
Inge Sieber noticed it in her own mother: True, Oma Vienna fully accepted Jennifer, but she was always a little more reserved toward her than toward her biological grandchildren, Matthias and Manuel.
Inge Sieber attributes her difficulties with Jennifer to the fact that her new daughter came with a very different personality: “I am more of an anxious type—Jenny is vivacious and confident. I wanted her to come home on time, she insisted on her freedom. We fought so many battles.”
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ONCE, IN A CANDY STORE, when I was nine or ten years old, I slipped two little marzipan piglets into my pocket. I was caught red-handed by the sales clerk, who told me off in front of all the customers. She made me put the sweets back; my adoptive parents never found out.
A few months later, I pocketed a bag of chocolates in a supermarket. I got through the checkout without being stopped and ran toward the exit—straight into the arms of a large man, the store security guard. He steered me into a side room and made me empty my pockets, whereupon the chocolates came to the surface. He called my parents first, and then the police. I could already see myself sitting in a cell in handcuffs. After a while, Inge arrived. Looking sad and embarrassed, she talked with the police officers and apologized to the guard. Inge and I drove home in silence. When Gerhard came home from the office, they summoned me to the living room and both gave me a severe dressing-down. I had to promise, hand over heart, that I would never shoplift again.
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