Back in the harsh reality of Fürth, however, Hermann’s endless fighting with his peers, bullying other boys and ‘causing new troubles by picking on Jews’²⁵ finally led to his being withdrawn from school.²⁶ In 1904, when he was eleven years old, he was sent – without his beloved dachshund – to an austere boarding school at Ansbach, which proved to be an even worse experience. In addition to strict discipline, at which Hermann always chafed, he became the butt of an incident of anti-Semitism.

A few weeks into his stay, his class was directed to write essays about the most admired man in their lives and young Göring wrote about his Pate [godfather], Dr. Hermann Epenstein, who he viewed as a model of success and a man to be emulated. Within a very short time, young Hermann was summoned to the headmaster’s office, where, in an ice-cold fury, the administrator towered over him and let him know loudly and clearly that ‘Ansbach boys’ did not write essays that praised Jews. In his typically bold fashion, Hermann objected to the characterisation of one of his life’s heroes, pointing out that Epenstein (whose mother was a gentile) was raised as a Roman Catholic. The incensed headmaster produced a copy of a large volume commonly called the Semi-Gotha, a perverse and unauthorised variation of the Gothaer Namensverzeichnis [Gotha Roll of Names], a respectable genealogical chronicle of noble families in the German-speaking world. The Semi-Gotha served only to identify and further stigmatise Jews who had married into titled families or who had been granted patents of nobility. The headmaster pointed out the Epenstein listing and ordered Hermann to write 100 times ‘I shall not write essays in praise of Jews’. Then the boy was made to transcribe every name in the Semi-Gotha from A to E.²⁷

Later that day, a deeper humiliation took place after the story was spread among the other students. Hermann was accosted outside the building and, after much kicking and punching, was subdued by three bigger boys who forced him to walk around the school’s grounds wearing the crudely fashioned sign ‘MEIN PATE IST EIN JUDE’ [My godfather is a Jew]. Hermann’s anger remained so strong and furious that, the following morning, he arose very early, gathered up his possessions and walked to the train station to leave Ansbach for good. Later, he told his sister Olga that, on his way out, he expressed his rage by smashing a violin he had been given and cutting the strings of the school band’s other instruments.²⁸

A Military Education

Hermann’s parents and Dr. Epenstein did not know what to do with the obstreperous boy. He simply did not seem to fit into normal society. Near the end of his life, Göring admitted that his mother once said of him: ‘Hermann will be either a great man or a great criminal.’²⁹