When Engel Marie Dorothee Bahe was born on 18 August 1861, in Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, Germany, her father, Johann Philipp Bahe, was 53 and her mother, Catharine Engel Rehse, was 41. She married Johann Heinrich Friedrich Bilges on 29 May 1887, in Waltringhausen, Grafschaft Schaumburg, Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, Germany. She died on 12 February 1894, at the age of 32.