83-year-old twins died together on same day

After 83 years at each other’s side, twin sisters from Bavaria in Germany have died on exactly the same day in the same nursing home. Anna and Maria Bachmaier, from Steinhöring, east of Munich, were both born on June 4th 1930 and stayed with each other until their death at the nursing home on August 10th.

Anna, known as Anni, died at 5am last Saturday from liver cancer. Her twin sister was sleeping in the room next to her and followed her hours later. When Anna died, Maria’s sleep was disturbed, their nephew Peter Bachmaier said. He said Maria, who had lost a leg through diabetes, cried out in her sleep.



“It is just unbelievable," he said. "They couldn’t survive without each other. My whole life I saw how they thought and felt like identical twins.” As she was sleeping Maria knew nothing of her younger sister’s death but hours later she too died. “I had been saying for weeks that they would go on the same day,” Bachmaier said.

But as young women Maria and Anna, who never married or had children, went their separate ways. Anna stayed in the area and worked in a local church for 48 years. Church warden Ignaz Loidl said: “She was very pious and her faith got her through any problems.” Maria, meanwhile, went to work in Munich as a nurse but regularly visited home. When she retired in 1985 she returned and lived with Anna.