Andrea Göppner, 45, was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a German court for killing the infants, which were found wrapped in towels and carrier bags in her attic flat.
Eight corpses were found in her home in Wallenfels, Bavaria, in November after a family member found one
body.
Christoph Gillot, the judge overseeing one of the worst ever cases of multiple infanticide in Germany, reduced the charges from murder to manslaughter, arguing that Göppner had killed the babies not out of “blatant self-interest” but in order to “keep her existing family intact”.
Her estranged husband, Johann Göppner, 55, was acquitted on charges of being an accessory to the killings for failing to stop them.
A court heard how Göppner had given birth unaided to eight children between 2003 and 2013.
However, the court could only hear four of the cases because it could not be ascertained with three of the corpses whether they had been alive when they were born because they were so badly decomposed and one was a still birth.
The discovery was made by a family member after Göppner had moved out of the family home to live with a new partner.
Judge Gillot defended his decision not to hand down a life sentence, citing the “whole range” of motives Göppner had had for carrying out the killings.
He concluded there was no evidence she had planned to murder her babies.
He said: “When a case like this goes to trial, suddenly there are many people who know what the right thing to do is, and say a ‘horror mother’ has to be locked away for ever.
“But first and foremost, we have to try to understand such behaviour. That doesn’t mean justifying it, it just means trying to comprehend it.”
Göppner confessed via her lawyer she had given birth to each of her babies at home, unaccompanied, and had wrapped each of them in a towel.
As soon as a baby moved or cried, she suffocated it before placing its corpse in a plastic bag or box and hiding it in the flat.
But she could not remember how many she had killed.
The Göppners each had two children from relationships before their marriage and had three more children together.
The dead babies were discovered by Johann Göppner’s oldest daughter, Nina, in the autumn of 2015, in a disused sauna and behind a rafter in the bathroom.
Nina Göppner had thrown her stepmother out of the house on discovering in October 2015 that she had been having an affair.
On finding numerous unopened letters, bills and arrears notices she confronted her father.
Nina, 31, told the court: “My father told me he was scared that there was something far more serious to be found.”
A year earlier Göppner had admitted while drunk that she had given birth to a child.
Nina said she was haunted by the idea that her stepmother had been telling the truth.
She said: “There’s a saying that small children and drunks tell the truth.”
She decided to search the sauna, which had been used for years as a store cupboard, where she discovered a plastic box – the contents of which stank.
When her father failed to investigate the sauna for himself, his daughter returned with a friend.
She sobbed as she told the court: “We opened the box and found a bloody towel. It was clear I was going to find something I did not want to find.” She called the police who then found the remains of a further seven babies.
The mother’s family have insisted nobody notice the multiple pregnancies and claimed she explained away her weight fluctuations and the fact she was producing milk by saying she had been taking hormone tablets to cope with the menopause.
Göppner’s defence lawyer, Till Wagler, said his client had first become pregnant at 18.
After the birth of her second child, and after meeting Mr Göppner, she separated from her husband.
After she and Mr Göppner had had three children together, her mother and husband urged her to be sterilised.
But Göppner did not go through with the procedure and half a year later she was pregnant once again.
Wagner said she was “surprised” when she gave birth and tried to hide it from her family.
The scenario repeated itself seven times, and each time, said Wagler “it was as if she was under the influence of drugs”.
On asking her husband what she should do the last time she discovered she was pregnant in 2013 he had “laughed derisively”, Wagler said.
The court heard that Mr Göppner had since demolished the sauna but continued to live in the house with four of his children.
Wagler told the court that Göppner, who shielded her face with an A4 office file throughout the trial, would not appeal against the conviction and that she was relieved it was now over.
The case was one of several cases of multiple infanticide in Germany in recent years.
