Edda Göring (2 June 1938 – 21 December 2018) was the only child of German politician, military leader, and leading member of the
Nazi Party Hermann Göring, by his second marriage to the German actress
Emmy Sonnemann. The family name is also spelt in English-language sources as
Goering.
Born a year before the outbreak of the
Second World War, Edda spent most of her childhood years with her mother at the Göring family estate at
Carinhall. As a child she received many historical works of art as gifts, including a painting of the
Madonna and Child by
Lucas Cranach the Elder.
In the final stages of the war, she and her mother moved to their mountain home at
Obersalzberg, near
Berchtesgaden. After the war, she went to a girls-only school, studied at the
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and became a
law clerk. In the 1950s and 1960s many of the valuable gifts she received as a child, including the
Madonna and Child painting, became the subject of long legal battles, most of which she eventually lost in 1968.
Unlike the children of other high-ranking Nazis, such as
Gudrun Himmler and
Albert Speer, Jr., Göring did not speak in public about her father's career. However, in 1986 she was interviewed for Swedish television and spoke lovingly of both her parents.
Early years
Edda grew up at Carinhall and like other daughters of high-ranking Nazi leaders and officials she was called
Kleine Prinzessin ("Little Princess").When she was one year old, the journalist
Douglas Reed wrote in
Life magazine that she was, "a sort of Crown Princess.
1945 and after
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. On 8 May 1945,
Germany 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 Nuremberg. 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". During the
Nuremberg trials, Edda was allowed to visit her father in prison. He was sentenced to death, but on 15 October 1946, the night before his scheduled execution, Göring committed suicide by swallowing a
cyanide pill.
By April 1946, Emmy and Edda Göring were living in a small house at Sackdilling.
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. In November 1948, the family moved to
Etzelwang to be nearer the school. In 1949, Emmy faced legal problems regarding some valuable possessions and explained many of them as the property of Edda, now aged ten. After leaving school, Edda studied law at the
University of Munich and became a law clerk; she later worked for a doctor. 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".
Later life
In her later years, Edda worked in a hospital laboratory and was hoping to become a medical technician. 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."
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. 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.”
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 . In the 1990s, she said of her father in an interview:
"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.”
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.”
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. A committee unanimously denied her request.
She died on 21 December 2018 and was buried at an undisclosed location in the
Munich Waldfriedhof.
Edda Göring - Wikipedia 11 Mar 2019.
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