According to the RFC casualty listing, the 7 Squadron crew of Sergeant Cecil P.J. Bromley (pilot) and Second-Lieutenant Geoffrey H. Wood (observer)¹³ were helping artillery units range their guns when they were reported to have been ‘shot down … at 4.45 p.m. Pilot died of wounds. Other pilots reported seeing the machine land, apparently under control, and then turn over on its nose.’¹⁴

In addition to the physical proximity of the two aerial combats, both took place at the same time of day, according to German and British records: The RFC aeroplane was seen to be hit at ‘4:45 p.m’. (1645 hours military time) and Göring reported being attacked fifteen minutes later at 1700 hours. Had another German pilot or a forward observer seen the British aircraft crash, Göring might have received credit for his third aerial victory. Likewise, had a British airman witnessed Göring’s aeroplane crash land at Gonnelieu airfield, some twenty-five kilometres east of Combles, one of the Nieuport pilots could have claimed it as an aerial victory. But, as a survey of military records shows, many pilots on both sides of the lines were not recognised for such combat achievements; conversely, many aircraft that were seen spiralling down or perceived to hit the ground were credited as “kills” even when the “victims” came through the encounter safely and their aeroplanes were still useable. Such were the vagaries of aerial combat success verifications on all sides in World War I.

There is no doubt that Hermann Göring waged a hard fight against the stable but hard to manoeuvre artillery spotter.¹⁵ Proof of the British observer’s tenacity was made clear less than two weeks later, when Second Lieutenant Wood, who was wounded in the fight,¹⁶ was awarded the Military Cross.¹⁷ The award citation noted his ‘conspicuous gallantry in action. He has continually … obtained valuable information, and displayed great courage and determination throughout.’¹⁸

The extraordinary circumstances that Göring claimed occurred on 2 November 1916 – from flawed descriptions of a huge bomber to the film-like scenario of a fortuitous landing next to a field hospital – are examples of his embellishing (or authorising the embellishment of) an account of an already worthy achievement to make it seem to be even more significant. As will be shown, such behaviour became typical for him.

Behind the Veil

But he never admitted to his blatantly obvious self-aggrandisement, even in texts he wrote or authorised. Dismissing a short autobiography he was asked to write when first confined at Nuremberg in 1945, Göring told a U.S. Army psychiatrist, Dr. Leon Goldensohn: ‘Nobody knows the real Göring. I am a man of many parts, but the autobiography, what does that tell you? Nothing. And those books put out by the [Nazi] party press, they are less than useless.’¹⁹

Obviously, ‘those books’ include the Sommerfeldt and Gritzbach biographies he approved. As will be seen, both have historical value. Further, other records and accounts exist to add balance to his early life’s story and thereby help researchers determine more of the unadorned truth, despite the apparent ease with which Hermann Göring stepped away from reality and into his own fantasies.

His family background was a most sensitive area of the shining image that he sought to manipulate. Goldensohn observed, Göring ‘seemed loath to pursue the story of his siblings … or of his relationship to them.’ But that delicate area and its foibles is where this story begins.

Hermann Göring’s father – christened Ernst Heinrich, but called Heinrich – was born on Hallowe‘en, 31 October 1838 in Emmerich, a small city on the north bank of the Rhine river, a few kilometres from the Dutch border. He was descended from a line of civil servants among who include a commissarius loci [administrative district commissioner] appointed by the eighteenth century Prussian King Frederick the Great.²⁰ Born in 1649 at Rügenwalde in Brandenburg Province and christened Michael Christian Gering,²¹ this ancestor changed the family name – which, as an adjective, means ‘small, trifling, petty’ – to Göring. Under the name of Michael Christian Göring, he became so successful at his work that he was appointed to be royal tax collector for the Ruhr industrial area, and thus his descendants lived in western Germany, where they prospered as officials and officers.²²

The son of a judge, Heinrich Göring studied law at the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg and earned a doctoral degree in jurisprudence. He also gained a commission in the Landwehr [militia] and was called to active duty when war broke out between Prussia and Austria in 1866 and again during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.²³ Between the wars, the thirty-one-year-old military officer married Ida Remy, the daughter of a prominent industrial family in Rasselstein bei Neuwied in his native Rhineland and eight years younger than he. Their first child, Friedrich Wilhelm, was born on 29 October 1870 in Heddesdorf in the Neuwied district.²⁴ After the war, Heinrich Göring was appointed a district judge,²⁵ which provided some minor prestige and a steady source of income. A second child, Ida, was born on 13 September 1872, but died seventeen days later.²⁶ Heinrich and his wife had three more children – Ernst Albert on 5 October 1873, Friederike Wilhelmine Clara on 16 July 1875, and Heinrich Carl on 17 April 1879. Unfortunately, six days after the birth of her youngest child,²⁷ thirty-one-year-old Ida Göring died of ‘maternity fever’,²⁸ related to poor hygienic conditions where she delivered.²⁹

The last three births and Ida’s death occurred in Devant-les-Ponts, near Metz in the Lorraine province that had been ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. There, Heinrich Göring made slow, steady progress in the civil service,³⁰ until 1884, when he gave up his judgeship and put aside sad memories of Germany’s new western frontier to join the consular service at the foreign office in Berlin.³¹ The widower arranged for his extended family to raise his children while he pursued his new career – and an active social life. Thus, the strait-laced Prussian bureaucrat met and became charmed by Franziska (Fanny) Tiefenbrunn, who is variously described as ‘a Munich beer garden waitress of uncertain descent’,³² and ‘a lively, buxom Bavarian girl of Austrian origin’.³³ She was also some twenty years Heinrich’s junior.

Overseas Postings

The following year, Heinrich was assigned to administer German South West Africa [now the Republic of Namibia], an area of significant German commercial and religious settlement that had become a colony of the young German empire a year earlier. To prepare for his new post, he went to London to study the organisational and administrative techniques that had made Great Britain such a successful colonial power. The trip to London came at a most fortuitous time, as Fanny had become pregnant by Heinrich and they could be married out of sight of official circles in Berlin. The 28 May 1885 ceremony in the German Chapel Royal, St. James was witnessed only by a German couple with whom the Görings were close friends.³⁴ Heinrich and Fanny returned to Berlin long enough to put their affairs in order and have their marriage solemnised by a Lutheran minister before Heinrich departed for Africa,³⁵ leaving his wife in Germany.

A few days later, on 2 June, Fanny arrived in Rosenheim, some fifty kilometres southeast of Munich, where she had family and friends. While in the picturesque town, she boarded with a local family, the Gabriels, in Kunstmühlstrasse Nr. 8, until she was admitted to the Rosenheimer Marienbad at Hausstätterstrasse Nr. 22. That sanitarium was run by an Austrian medical team ‘whose skilful care … [was] so well known that patients came from all over Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.’³⁶ The sanitarium cared for patients convalescing from illnesses and depression, and also had a maternity section.³⁷ After the death of his first wife, Heinrich Göring naturally sought the best care for his new, younger bride. Thus, in the Rosenheimer Marienbad, midwife Karoline Feil delivered the Görings’ first child, Karl Ernst, on 3 August.³⁸ Fanny remained in the Gabriel family’s care until 26 March 1888.³⁹ The two years and nine months she spent in Rosenheim may have been due to extended treatment for some post-partum medical event or simply to allow Fanny and her infant son to be comfortable and safely away from the fierce wilderness of German South West Africa.

Meanwhile, Heinrich Göring had negotiated with the indigenous Herero tribal chiefs to secure a large, safe and stable territorial stake in that part of Africa.⁴⁰ His efforts to promote growth in the country were so successful that in May 1886 Bismarck appointed him as the colony’s first Reichskommissar [Reich’s Commissioner]. Indeed, Göring’s legacy lives on in Windhoek, the capital of today’s Republic of Namibia, where one of the main thoroughfares is still named Göring Strasse.

By the time Fanny and Karl joined Heinrich at his new posting, the boy was walking and able to cope with some of the hardships of colonial life, including attacks by Herero tribesmen that forced the Görings to flee their home ‘on many occasions’.⁴¹ Fanny remained in Africa for the birth of her second child, Olga Therese Sophie, in the German settlement of Waldfischbach on 16 January 1889; Olga was delivered by an Austrian-born physician assigned to the region, Dr.med. Hermann Epenstein,⁴² who later became an important figure in Göring family life. But when Fanny became pregnant a third time, she returned to her friends at Kunstmühlstrasse Nr. 8 in Rosenheim and entered the Marienbad sanitarium, where the midwife Frau Feil delivered her daughter Paula Elisabeth Rosa.⁴³ This time Fanny stayed with the Gabriels in Rosenheim for twenty-eight months, from 4 June 1889 through 2 October 1891.⁴⁴

Meanwhile, in 1890, Reichskommissar Göring was granted a long vacation leave in Germany to recuperate from the strain of his African experiences. Joyful at being reunited with his wife, he volunteered for another – apparently less stressful – overseas posting as consul general and minister resident at Port-au-Prince, capital of the former French colony of Haiti.⁴⁵ Fanny and the three children accompanied him, but after she became pregnant with her fourth child, she left the disease-ridden Caribbean nation and returned alone to Rosenheim. On 10 July 1892, once again she moved in with the Gabriel family.⁴⁶ In the interim, she and her husband had remained in contact with the physician from their days in Africa, Dr. Hermann Epenstein,⁴⁷ who was made aware of the now thirty-three-year-old Fanny’s visit to Rosenheim. It was no surprise when he showed up at her door and assured her that she would be under his watchful eye when it came time for her to enter the Rosenheimer Marienbad. On 12 January 1893, the same midwife, Frau Feil, delivered the Görings’ second son,⁴⁸ who Fanny named Hermann Wilhelm.⁴⁹ There is speculation that the boy’s first name honoured Dr. Epenstein, who had become Fanny’s constant companion during the lonely days without Heinrich and the children. Further, Epenstein became godfather to Hermann and then, later, to all of Fanny Göring’s children.⁵⁰

From the beginning of his life, Hermann was a big boy, weighing some ‘twelve pounds’.⁵¹ And soon he became a neglected boy. After he was weaned, a few months later,⁵² Fanny left him in the care of her friends (and possibly relatives) in the Graf family in the Franconian city of Fürth, just northwest of Nuremberg, when she returned to Haiti to rejoin the rest of her family. As a consequence of that early separation from Fanny, Hermann addressed Frau Graf as ‘mother’ and throughout his life held her in the highest esteem.⁵³ British writer Leonard Mosley, who met Hermann Göring prior to World War II and later came to know Göring family members and friends, observed about Hermann: ‘He was obviously a lonely child and nothing that his surrogate parents did for him seemed capable of making up for the absence of his real parents. “It is the cruellest thing that can happen to a child, to be torn from his mother in his formative years,” Hermann … [said] many years later.’⁵⁴

Fanny did not remain with her husband and children during much of the remaining time of Heinrich Göring’s assignment in Haiti. In the summer of 1894 she sailed alone from Haiti back to Germany, where the ever-helpful Dr. Epenstein got her settled in Friedenau, the Berlin suburb in which he also lived. On 9 March 1895, she gave birth to her fifth (and last) child, Albert Günter, in Berlin-Friedenau.⁵⁵ Once again, Dr. Epenstein was on hand. Eleven years younger than Fanny’s husband, the physician had the means to assure that she lived comfortably during and after her confinement.

Most likely, during the 1894-1895 time span Fanny Göring and Hermann Epenstein began what would become a long-time love affair,⁵⁶ which raises questions about Albert Göring’s paternity. Fanny and her husband could have conceived the boy just before she departed Haiti, but many people who knew Fanny and Epenstein were sure that Albert had been fathered by the physician. Both had similar facial features, dark hair and eyes, as well as ‘a Central European physiognomy, while Hermann and the other Göring children were fair and blue-eyed’.⁵⁷ But, as a family friend noted later: ‘Everyone accepted the situation, and it did not seem to trouble Hermann or Albert at all.’⁵⁸

Back Home

In 1896, Heinrich Göring returned from Haiti, sick and, at age fifty-eight, prematurely old.⁵⁹ Life in the tropics had taken a toll on him and now he was being ushered into early retirement. He had few savings, having spent considerable sums of money to pay for Fanny’s three extended visits to Rosenheim. But his friend – and Fanny’s ardent admirer – Dr. Epenstein was most generous with financial support. By now, Heinrich must have realised that his wife and Epenstein were more than friends, but there was nothing he could do about it. As a consequence, he began to drink heavily to cope with the despair about his waning career and, likely, the sorry state of his marriage.⁶⁰

One result of his son Hermann’s long separation from his parents became clear when they finally travelled to Fürth to retrieve him from the Graf family. Upon being presented to his birth mother, young Hermann used his fists to ‘bash … [her] in the face when she came to embrace him’.⁶¹ It cannot be determined whether the boy sought to punish his natural mother or, not recognising her, thought a stranger was taking him away from ‘Mother’ Graf, with whose family he had spent such a formative time. During his post-World War II imprisonment, Hermann Göring recounted that story as his earliest childhood recollection to U.S. Army psychologist Gustave M. Gilbert. Seeking to understand what motivated Göring later in life, Dr. Gilbert made this assessment:

‘…This tendency to overt aggression manifested itself very early as one of [Göring’s] chief satisfactions in life, and he undoubtedly laughed in playful glee at his mother’s pained chagrin over his unruliness. At least he laughed most heartily in describing this and similar incidents to me in his cell in the Nuremberg jail …’⁶²

Heinrich, Fanny and their five children settled in Berlin, where, once again thanks to Dr. Epenstein’s generosity, the family lived – rent-free⁶³ – in a house that the physician owned in Friedenau.⁶⁴ Epenstein had his own house in Berlin, where his father, also a physician, had become wealthy through land and property speculation.⁶⁵ His largesse – especially toward Fanny and the children⁶⁶ – assured him of a warm welcome at the stylish Göring residence in Fregestrasse, a tiny neighbourhood that was an ideal location for Heinrich and Fanny to entertain civilian and military notables in a manner that would otherwise be beyond their financial resources.

Those guests and the Görings’ regular Sunday visits to the Potsdam parade grounds⁶⁷ had a profound effect on young Hermann. Dr. Gilbert observed from his discussions that the boy ‘became fascinated by the military display: the uniforms and parades, the officers barking orders at their goose-stepping soldiers. Prussian militarism appealed to [Hermann’s] aggressive temperament in preference to the Bavarian Gemütlichkeit [geniality] and he soon identified himself with the aspirations common to … offspring of the Prussian Junker caste.’⁶⁸

Part of that identification centred on the value that young Göring placed on prestige. Gilbert noted that Hermann precociously learned from his father that ‘[t]he lowest second lieutenant … took precedence over a minister of state in the rules of protocol at the Kaiser’s court – even on the grand march into the ballroom at state receptions.’⁶⁹

Heinrich Göring tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy in his home and indulged his children. When he presented Hermann with a Hussar officer’s uniform for his fifth birthday, it was the perfect accoutrement for the boy’s fantasies, as Dr. Gilbert observed:

‘His childhood play was devoted almost exclusively to waging war, leading his small army of youngsters and toy cannons against imaginary enemies of Kaiser und Vaterland [Emperor and Fatherland]. If there was any question about his leadership … he would bash their heads together and let them know “damn quick” who was boss. For, if his beautiful uniforms and his father’s position of authority were not enough to establish [Hermann’s] right of dominance over his companions, his ready use of force settled any doubts on that score.’⁷⁰

A Fortress Dream Come True

In many ways, Hermann Göring’s fantasies were matched by those of his godfather and patron. A year after Hermann was born, the wealthy physician purchased an abandoned fifteenth century burg [fortress] among the Tauern Mountains in Mauterndorf, Austria, about 125 kilometres southeast of Munich, and ‘spent a great deal of money on … recreating it in the heavy and pompous atmosphere of German medievalism that so stirred the young imagination of his godchild’.⁷¹ Then, in 1897, Epenstein bought another, smaller burg in the Bavarian mountain village of Neuhaus an der Pegnitz, some thirty kilometres northeast of Nuremberg. Over the next decade, the physician used his wealth to return the 900-year-old bulwark – known as Burg Veldenstein⁷² – with its commanding view high above the Pegnitz river, to some of its former glory. Meanwhile, when Heinrich Göring was finally pensioned off by the foreign office in 1898, he was enticed to leave his pleasant home outside Berlin by Epenstein’s offer for him and his family to use a house built into the lower walls of Burg Veldenstein. But it soon became apparent that Heinrich and his children were living in baronial style at an emotional cost to him. They lived in one part of the old fortress while, during Epenstein’s visits, Heinrich’s attractive, much younger wife lived in another part, obvious to one and all as the physician’s mistress.⁷³