Edda Göring

The only child of Hermann Göring, Edda was born on 2 June 1938.[3] Her father received approximately 628,000 messages of congratulations on his daughter's birth; tributes came in from all over the world, including telegrams from British Lords Halifax and Londonderry.[4] The historian Giles MacDonogh later described the German reaction to the birth:

The Reich was jubilant on 2 June. Its first lady, Emmy Göring, gave birth to a baby girl. The child was named Edda. The actress was 45, and her husband had been shot in the groin during the Beer Hall Putsch, so there was talk of virgin birth. When Hermann came to pick up his wife and child from the sanatorium 10 days later, the streets were black with cheering crowds.[5]

It has often been suggested that the name Edda was given in honour of the daughter of Benito Mussolini, but her mother stated that this was not so.[6][7] On 4 November 1938, she was baptised at Carinhall, and Adolf Hitler became her godfather. The occasion was reported by Life, with many photographs of Edda, her parents and Hitler, who greatly enjoyed the event.[8] Her baptism presents included two paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder.[9]

To the displeasure of Heinrich Himmler, it was discovered that neither Emmy nor Edda's nanny was a Nazi Party member, but this was soon corrected when Göring arranged for Emmy to join the party.[10] On Hitler's instructions, she received the Golden Party Badge, a rare award originally reserved for founding members, long-term supporters, or people who had shown outstanding service to the party.[11]

Edda grew up at Carinhall and like other daughters of high-ranking Nazi leaders and officials she was called Kleine Prinzessin ("Little Princess").[12] When she was one year old, the journalist Douglas Reed wrote in Life that she was "a sort of Nazi Crown Princess."[9]

In 1940, the Luftwaffe paid for a small-scale replica of Frederick the Great's palace of Sanssouci to be built in an orchard at Carinhall for her to play in.[10] Some 50 metres long, 7 metres wide, and 3½ metres high, this had within it a miniature theatre, complete with stage and curtains, and was known as Edda-Schlösschen ("Edda's little palace").[13]

In 1940, Der Stürmer magazine printed a story alleging that Edda had been conceived by artificial insemination. A furious Göring demanded action by Walter Buch, the supreme Nazi Party regulator, against the editor, Julius Streicher. Buch declared he was ready to "stop that sick mind once and for all," but Hitler intervened to save Streicher and the outcome was that he was stripped of some honors, but was allowed to go on publishing Der Stürmer from his farm near Nürnberg.[14]

During the closing stages of the Second World War in Europe, Göring retreated to his mountain home at Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden, taking Emmy and Edda with him.[15] On 8 May 1945, Armistice in Europe Day, The German Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally, and on 21 May, a few days before her seventh birthday, Edda was interned with her mother in the U.S.-controlled Palace Hotel, code-named Camp Ashcan at Mondorf in Luxembourg. By 1946, the two had been freed and were living at one of their own houses, Burg Veldenstein, in Neuhaus, near Nürnberg. There they were visited by the American officer John E. Dolibois, who described Edda as "a beautiful child, the image of her father. Bright and perky, polite and well-trained."[16] During the Nuremberg trials, Edda was allowed to visit her father in prison.[17] He was found guilty of war crimes and was sentenced to death, but on 15 October 1946, the night before his scheduled execution, Göring committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill.[18]

By April 1946, Emmy and Edda Göring were living in a small house at Sackdilling.[19]

In 1948, while living near Hersbruck with her mother and her aunt Else Sonnemann, Edda entered the St Anna-Mädchenoberrealschule ("Saint Anne's High School for Girls") at Sulzbach-Rosenberg in Bavaria where she remained until gaining her Abitur.[20] In November 1948, the family moved to Etzelwang to be nearer the school.[21][22] In 1949, Emmy faced legal problems regarding some valuable possessions and explained many of them as the property of Edda, now aged ten.[23] After leaving school, Edda studied law at the University of Munich and became a law clerk;[24] she later worked for a doctor.[25] A private letter from an unknown relative in 1959 stated that "the baby is now a young lady, slim, fair-haired and pretty. She lives with her mother on the 5th floor of a modern apartment block in the Munich city centre."

Edda Göring, left

In her later years, Edda worked in a hospital laboratory and was hoping to become a medical technician.[26] She was a regular guest of Hitler's patron Winifred Wagner whose grandson, Gottfried Wagner, later recalled:

My aunt Friedelind was outraged when my grandmother again slowly blossomed as the first lady of right-wing groups and received political friends such as Edda Goering, Ilse Hess, the former National Democratic Party of Germany chairman Adolf von Thadden, Gerdy Troost, the wife of the Nazi architect and friend of Hitler, Paul Ludwig Troost, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the Nazi film director Karl Ritter and the racialist author and former cultural leader of the Reich Hans Severus Ziegler.[27]

Edda worked in a rehabilitation clinic in Wiesbaden and devoted herself to taking care of her mother, remaining with her until she died on 8 June 1973.[28] After that, for five years in the 1970s, Edda was the companion of the Stern magazine journalist Gerd Heidemann. Heidemann had bought the yacht Carin II, which had been Hermann Göring's, and according to Peter Wyden "He charmed Edda, pretty, not married, and devoted to the memory of her father, the Reichsmarschall, and started an affair with her. Together, they ran social events aboard the boat. Much of the talk was of Hitler and the Nazis, and the guests of honor were weathered eyewitnesses of the hallowed time, two generals, Karl Wolff and Wilhelm Mohnke."[29]

For some years Edda made public appearances, attending memorials for Nazis and taking part in political events, but she later became more withdrawn. Unlike the children of other high-ranking Nazis, such as Gudrun Himmler and Albert Speer, Jr., she never commented publicly on her father's role in the Third Reich or the Holocaust. In the 1990s, she said of her father in an interview:[30]

I loved him very much, and it was obvious how much he loved me. My only memories of him are such loving ones, I cannot see him any other way. I actually expect that most everybody has a favorable opinion of my father, except maybe in America. He was a good father to me.[31]

In 2010, Edda said of her uncle Albert Göring for an article in The Guardian, "He could certainly help people in need himself financially and with his personal influence, but, as soon as it was necessary to involve higher authority or officials, then he had to have the support of my father, which he did get."[32]

The governments of West Germany and the reunited Germany denied Edda Göring the pension normally given to the children of government ministers of the old German Reich. As of 2015, she was reported to be still living in Munich. In that year, she unsuccessfully petitioned the Landtag of Bavaria for compensation with respect to the expropriation of her father's legacy.[33] A committee unanimously denied her request.[34]

She died on 21 December 2018 and was buried at an undisclosed location in the Munich Waldfriedhof.[35][25][36]

• Angolia, John (1989). For Führer and Fatherland: Political & Civil Awards of the Third Reich. R. James Bender. ISBN 978-0912138169.
• Bertz, Michael (2008). Looting and Restitution: Jewish-Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present. Wallstein Publishing. ISBN 978-3-8353-0361-4.
• Brockdorff, Werner (1969). Escape from Nuremberg: Plans and Organization of the Escape Routes of the Nazi Prominence.
• Manvell, Roger (2011). Goering. London: Skyhorse. ISBN 978-1-61608-109-6.
• MacDonogh, Giles (1998). 1938: Hitler's Gamble. London: Constable. ISBN 978-1-84529-845-6.
• Göring, Emmy (1972). My Life with Göring. London: David Bruce & Watson.
• Göring, Emmy (1967). On My Husbands Events and Confessions. Saxony: Gottingen.
• Guenther, Irene (2004). Fashioning Women in the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main: Berg.
• Knopf, Stefan (2007). Goring's Reich: Self-dramatization in Carinhall. Berlin.
• Dolibois, John E. (2001). Pattern of Circles: an Ambassador's Story. Kent State University Press.
• Posner, Gerald L. (1991). Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich.
• Lippe, Viktor von der (1951). Nuremberg Diary Entries from November 1945 to October 1946. Berg, Frankfurt am Main: R. James Bender.
• Lebert, Stephan (2000). Because You Carry My Name: The Heavy Legacy of the Prominent Nazi Children. Munich: Karl Blessing Verlag.
• Lachenmann, Helmut (2002). Participants in a Mass Migration. Düsseldorf, Rhine-Ruhr.
• Sagstetter, Maria Rita (2001). Hermann Göring at Castle Veldenstein and Sackdilling. Bavaria, Munich.
• Sigmund, Anna Maria (2001). The Women of the Nazis. Bavaria, Munich.
• Wagner, Gottfried (2006). Our Zero Hour: Germans and Jews after 1945. ISBN 3-205-77335-7.
• Wyden, Peter (2001). The Hitler Virus: the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler. ISBN 1-55970-532-9.
• Klein, Adolf (1983). Cologne in the Third Reich. Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia.
• Francini, Georg (2001). The transfer of Cultural Property in Switzerland and Over the Question of Restitution (1933–1945). Zurich, Canton of Zürich.
• Pringle, Robert (2008). Inventing God. Zurich, Canton of Zürich: Pudding House. ISBN 978-1-58998-657-2.

• Burke, William Hastings (20 February 2010). "Albert Göring, Hermann's Anti-Nazi Brother". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 May 2014.
• "Edda Göring: Madonna ohne Makel". Spiegel Online (in German). Der Spiegel. 8. 21 February 1962. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
• "Göring-Tochter Fordert Geld vom Freistaat Zurück" (in German). Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
• "Government Keeps After Business; Nazis Cuss Roosevelt; A Gould Comes Out". Life. 14 November 1938. Retrieved 5 May 2014.