2nd June 1938
Edda Göring

Edda Göring (1938-2018)

Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring 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 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.'

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 8th May 1945, Armistice in Europe Day, the German Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally, and on 21st 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.'

In her later years, Edda worked in a hospital laboratory and was hoping to become a medical technician, then later in a rehabilitation clinic in Wiesbaden where she devoted herself to taking care of her mother, remaining with her until she died on 8th 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made public appearances, attending memorials for Nazis and taking part in political events, but she later became more withdrawn.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 or the Holocaust. 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.'

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 21st December 2018, aged 80, and was buried at an undisclosed location in the Munich Waldfriedhof.

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