Their shirts, pants and shoes are the same. But otherwise the twins hardly resemble each other. Neither by nature nor by body size – and above all not by skin color.
They were the Berlin birth sensation of 2008. On July 11, Leo and Ryan saw the light of day – one with dark skin, one with light skin. Mom Florence Gerth (48 today) comes from Ghana, dad Stephan (53) from Potsdam.
The chance of such a distribution of genes in twins is one in a million. Her photos went around the world at the time.
Leo and Ryan are now 13 years old. BZ visited the miracle twins.
At birth, their height separated them by only one centimeter (Leo 50 cm, Ryan 49 cm). Leo is now 1.78 meters tall and towers over his twin by a full 13 centimetres.
“Mom and Dad always thought Ryan was going to be a big brother,” says Leo. “That can still come,” says Ryan.
They live with their parents in a four-room prefab apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. “We had to move because our old apartment was being renovated and the rent was no longer payable,” says the mother.
Florence Gerth works as a geriatric nurse, her husband is a musician. Are the guys that musical too? “We took a guitar class once, but it wasn’t really our thing,” says Leo. And Ryan adds: “But we do like listening to music. Rap, rock, but also funk from Prince is cool.”
In their free time, they often play games together on the Playstation. During the day, however, the brothers rarely see each other. “We haven’t found a secondary school that takes both together,” says Florence Gerth. “The sibling bonus doesn’t always work.”
your favorite subjects? Leo: “Sports. After school I have a basketball club.” Ryan: “I like chemistry, especially the experiments.” And both like English, growing up bilingual.
And do the brothers already have career aspirations? “I would like to be a professional basketball player,” says Leo. Ryan is a little more down-to-earth: “I’d like to be a train driver.” And he emphasizes: “The main thing is that we find something that we enjoy.”