Most things aren’t always in black and white. But these twins, born on July 11, to an interracial couple in Germany are – one Black, the other White. Stephan Gerth is German and white. His wife, Florence Addo-Gerth, is from Ghana and has dark skin. The first baby, Ryan has light skin and blue eyes; the second, Leo is dark-skinned with brown eyes.
“None of us could believe it,” said Birgit Weber, the maternity ward’s head doctor. “Both kids have definitely the same father.”
The odds one in a million, but it is possible for fraternal twins if the genes combine in a certain way. According to Peter Propping, former director of the Institute for Human Genetics at Bonn University the Florence may have had some white ancestors, or Gerth may have had black ones. Very occasionally, the roll of the DNA die may cause the baby of biracial parents to inherit only the genetic coding for one color.
Similar occurrences have happened before. In 2005, a British couple Kylie Hodgson and Remi Horder, both born to mixed-race parents, had twin girls – one blond, fair skinned and the other dark skinned. 
In 2006, Kerry Richardson, Nigerian and her partner, who is white, got twins who were both born light-skinned. But as they got older, one got darker while the other got lighter.
Just like all siblings, their differences are more than skin deep. They also have different personalities; Leo is quieter and Ryan temperamental. The parents seem to have taken all this well. Gerth told the German newspaper Die Welt that it was a real surprise but added that the most important thing to him isn’t color, but that everyone is healthy. His wife says her children were born looking exactly as they should. “God has decided that my children should have different skin colors.”
Wonders never cease. Congrats to the family.
Tags: black women black men, interracial dating, interracial dating sites
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Comment by queen77 on 18 July 2008:
my congratulationg goes to this family that has been blesssed with twins,its quite strange as never seen that befor,the the white gene is stronger than than the black and is expected that the twins are light skinned but this is the will of God and we cannot question it.
Comment by atlmocha on 18 July 2008:
Am I the only one who isn’t surprised by this? It isn’t unusual. If you look at black families it happens all the time, even when both parents are black. And lord there is always one that looks like someone no one remembers seeing before but if you go back a few generations of pictures you find them.
The thing is that you have black people with flaming red hair, white people with very very kinky hair, blue eyed dark skinned children, and all manner of variation in between. But the nature of a faternal twins is that they share a womb but are completely different. And when you make babies with black people you just don’t know what might happen. You might have some idea but really you just don’t know.
I say the waiting for a beautiful healthy child is the thing not what color they are.
Comment by girlsixdiva on 18 July 2008:
That’s cute. I’ve known of a guy who is black and his twin brother is Filipino. Their mom is Filipino and their dad is Black.
Comment by charmyluv on 18 July 2008:
they are so cute
Comment by lonelylade on 18 July 2008:
Hello, such a beautiful thing….. blessed be and to a happy long life.
Comment by TIPPY2 on 18 July 2008:
NO !!!!! ATIMOCHA..YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT IS NOT SURPRISED. THAT MAY BE BECAUSE I AM EDUCATED. BLACKS,MAILY SPEAKING OF AMERICAN BLACKS ARE NOT AND I REPEAT ARE NOT AS RACIALLY BLACK AND MOST THINK THEY ARE, THEIR BLOODLINES WERE MIXED WITH MANY MANY DIFERENT RACES, CENTURIES AGO. ALL AMERICAN BLACKS CARRY THE GENETIC STRUCTURE FOR PRODUCING OFF-SPRINGS WITH BLUE EYES OR GREEN FOR THAT MATTER, BLOND, RED ANY COLOR HAIR, WHITE SKINNED OF DARK COMPLEXION BABIS/OFF SPRINGS..LIKE U SAID AND YOU ARE CORRECT, THE DARKER GENE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE STRONGEST MOST AGRESSIVE,DOMINATING, WHEREAS THE LIGHTER/WHITER GENE IS SLOW AND LAZY, ALL AMERICAN BLACKS CARRY ATLEAST 25% AND MUCH MORE OF SO CALLED WHITE GENES AND AS MANY MAY SAY, FIGURETIVELY SPEAKING, WHITE BLOOD, IN THEIR BLOOD WHETHER THEY WANT TO ACCEPT IT OR NOT..IN OTHER WORDS..A SO CALLED BLACK MAN AND WOMAN, BOTH AS DARK AS MIDNIGHT ARE VERY CAPABLE OF HAVING A BLONDE HAIRED BLUE-EYED BABY, WHY U DON’T SEE A LOT OF THIS HAPPENING,AGAIN, LIGHTER/WHITER GENES ARE SLOW AND LAZY..I LEARNED THIS YEARS AGO AT THE UNIVERSITY I RECEIVED MY DEGREE AT..ANYWAY REGARDLESS OF THE COLORS OR SO CALL RACE FACTOR…LOVE IS MORE IMPORTANT AND I WISH ALL THESE COUPLES THE BEST IN LIFE AND GOD BLESS THEM ALL……
Comment by latrelle on 19 July 2008:
I’m not surprised at all.
I have come to realize that God has a unique sense of humour. He somehow manages to keep men on their toes when they think they’ve scientifically figured it all out. Just when they believe they’ve found the answer… oops!.. there’s God, Master Designer and Source of Creativity, being elusive again.
Beautiful kids by the way.
Comment by JR0510 on 19 July 2008:
Actually this is fairly common in fraternal twins. It is actually a common theme in any genetics class and this is usually caused by the presence of recessive genes.
Comment by ice_princess on 19 July 2008:
This is no surprise there is a black woman on the new Big Brother show who has a black twin and a white twin. She is from Spring Texas, her husband is a white man.
Comment by Nandi on 19 July 2008:
I have fraternal twins, so this is not surprising..my twins looks nothing alike because fraternal twins are basically two seperate pregnancies, so two different dna spins…..
Tippy..I really do not get how you speak of “educated” to mocha, when your spew is totally uneducated and no not every black person is mixed with european genes…I hate to bust your bubble, however even in Africa there has always been many shades of black…So the “dark gene” BTW…no such gene called by that name is a stereotype…Recessive genes has nothing to do with slow and lazy…absolutely ridiculous…
However dna spins when one gets pregnant can go back 3-4 generations…possibly even longer, since one can trace their heritage/admixture genes 500 years through dna…
Now if these were identical twins…then this would be intriguing or another medical wonder resolved..Fraternal twins means nothing..since their dna is different…So of course their features would be different as well….
Comment by one2c on 20 July 2008:
I have a set of twins and my ex husband is white and I am black yes one of our son was lighter and the other is lighter.
Comment by one2c on 20 July 2008:
I have a set of twins and my ex husband is white and I am black yes one of our son was lighter and the other is darker.
Comment by incredible on 21 July 2008:
Praise God ,They are healthy .If we were all color blind then would we as a whole love unconditionally ??
Comment by bdogbill on 22 July 2008:
Well I dont find it surprising considering the fact that I, myself am mixed but look white. most people think I am joking when I tell them this but it is true. I mean look at Obama he’s just darker than I am so it is possible for this to happen with fraternal twins:)
Comment by puprlelover on 23 July 2008:
I can only hope I am lucky and blessed to be in a loving relationship and have beautiful twin children like these couples.no matter what color they end up.in my opinion it would be just fine with me if my twins did not look alike it would certainly make life more intersting.I HOPE THAT I WILL BE ABLE TO FIND A NICE GENTLEMAN ON THIS SITE TO HAVE A SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP SO THAT WE WILL BE BLESSED TO HAVE HEALTHY CUTE CHILDREN.AFTER ALL THAT IS WHY WE WERE ALL AT THIS WEBSITE TO FIND THE MAN OR WOMAN OF OUR DREAMS.GOOD LUCK TO ALL THE PARENTS AND BABIES ABOVE.
Comment by Minosa on 23 July 2008:
Divine beauty!
Here in the Caribbean this phenomena is o so very common. We are all so mixed with indian, european and african blood that any miracle can come out. Whole generations of green and blue eyed black people out here. The color of our blood makes us realize we are one and the same no matter what color the skin has.
Lovely pictures,
thank you!
Minosa
Comment by Tiffany on 24 July 2008:
I have fraternal twins who are very different in coloration. We are a white/hispanic mixed couple but the differences are there. My husband is always asking me how my “white” genes took the dominate position in our boys.
Comment by thick_lover on 25 July 2008:
Too cool! Ain’t humanity amazing?
Comment by raven3658 on 26 July 2008:
I have fraternal twins and my husband and I joked during pregnancy “wouldn’t it be funny if we have one black baby and one white” well guess what? we do have one black baby and one white. Our daughter is very light with auburn hair, very petite and look like her father’s side of the family who is white. Our son is very dark, always 10 lbs heavier than is sister and look like my side of the family which is black. I guess I don’t see the phenomenon in all this…it seem natural to me.
Comment by blkbeauty31 on 26 July 2008:
This is an amazing story!
Comment by SIXFT1976 on 27 July 2008:
I have always been fascinated when reading the attacks on fellow men opinions of these topics. It kills me when individuals claiming dominance and intelligence have a million typos and grammar errors. I would hope spell check is available in some countries.
Comment by SIXFT1976 on 27 July 2008:
I have always been fascinated when reading the attacks on fellow man opinions of these topics. It kills me when individuals claiming dominance and intelligence have a million typos and grammar errors. I would hope spell check is available in some countries.
Comment by Calqueen on 28 July 2008:
In the picture the darker twin is looking at his brother like WTF??
Comment by Rae56 on 28 July 2008:
My brother and sister are twins. Our parents are both a medium dark brown complexion, but until the twins were approximately three months old, one was dark and the other light. A family acquaintance tried to convince my father that he was not their father, but that their father had to be white because of the coloring of my sister. At 61, they are now both a beautiful shade of deep chocolate.
Comment by kenyanito on 16 September 2008:
congrats to the parents…children are God’s blessing and its only him who knows why the colour has to be different.
They are so cute
Comment by genelade on 28 September 2008:
First, yes all children are a blessing from above…
Now to the point:
This type of occurence is not all that improbable as we have seen. What I’m talking about is one couple giving birth to twins of considerable feature differences. However, this here is EXTREME. The darker baby (cute as can be) is not even remotely caucasoid in features. His hair does not look like the soft, downy, wavy/straight hair of newborn multi-racial babies(which may change later). Also, the tips of his ears are very dark (like nigerian ebony) indicating that by the time he is six months, he will have turned a couple shades darker. Any black person understands this. Most likely, the darker twin of mixed race twinings will be no darker than the color of a dark fillipino. This baby’s daddy is supposed to be white? I dont think so. Regardless of whether this child inherited a dark skin gene from his momma, he is still supposed to “look” mixed race. In example, SOMETHING LIKE WHITE PEOPLE. Hope you guys know that is possible for a woman to give birth to twins with different daddies. Let’s see the results of the DNA test, though…
Comment by tasteykoko on 28 September 2008:
Wow, i never heard of that before
Comment by paris123 on 14 November 2008:
unique