Two sons held a vigil at the beside of their dying stepmother - only to be told she had already died elsewhere.
The men spent days at the beside of a severely injured woman after being told it was their step-mum before finding out that their mother had died days earlier.
Their father, 80, and stepmother, 67, died when the tourist bus they were travelling in veered off the road and tumbled down a hill on the Portuguese holiday island of Madeira two weeks ago.
The crash killed 17 women and 12 men.
After the accident, a tragic mix-up of identities took place.
While the two men, from Neumuenster, Germany, were informed their father had died, they were also wrongly told their stepmother was severely injured and would be flown home for further treatment.
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The woman was flown to Cologne, where for five days they two sons stood vigil at the hospital bed thinking the person was their stepmother.
But when dental records were checked last Friday, the authorities discovered their father and mother had died in the crash meaning the injured woman flown to Cologne was someone else entirely.
According to local media, it turned out the injured woman was later identified as someone from Hanover.
She was induced into an artificial coma after the bus accident and flown by an aeroplane of the German Air Force to Cologne.
Before the return transport from Madeira to Germany, doctors shortly woke up the woman and asked her to give her name with the help of a letter board, which is where the identity mix-up reportedly happened.
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The two men who stood vigil at the hospital bed never questioned the identity of the woman as she had a similar posture as their stepmother.
Due to the severe swelling around her eyes and disfigured face from the crash she was hardly recognisable.
One of the sons said: "We could not tell that it was not our mother."
The sons also added that they were given personal items from their stepmother at the Cologne hospital, like her driving licence and her wallet, which made them believe that the patient was their stepmother.
The body of their stepmother has been correctly identified since the discovery of the mix-up.
The German Foreign Office and Portuguese authorities did not comment on the case as they refuse to give information on individual cases to non-relatives.
In total 29 people - mostly German tourists - were killed in the tragic bus accident on the Portuguese island in the Atlantic known for its fabulous vistas and abundance of flowers.
