Goering by Roger Manvell Read Free Book Online Page A

Fanny had been married to a German officer, Count Richard von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who was killed in the war. Carin’s sympathies were entirely with Germany as it was symbolized by her brother-in-law and now by the handsome German war hero who, she began to realize, was deeply in love with her.
    Carin was by nature and upbringing sentimentally religious. Her mother maintained a special Christian sisterhood which was centered in her house. This sisterhood, called the Edelweiss Society, had been originated by Carin’s grandmother, Mrs. Beamish, who had settled in Sweden when she was widowed. Mrs. Beamish had died on Christmas Day, 1895, and her daughter, the Baroness, had promised her that she would maintain the society in the same spirit.
    The Edelweiss Society had its own chapel, a small building in the little walled garden behind the family home in Greve-Ture-Gatan. The chapel, like the society, still survives, with the present Countess von Rosen as its sister superior. Its meetings were, and still are, confined to weekdays, when the members meet for prayer and music. The chapel can hold only a very few people. It is bright and cheerful with the sunlight streaming through its windows; its floors are beautifully carpeted and it is furnished with antique pieces. Four prie-dieu stand before the miniature chancel with its altar. Outside is a walled garden with religious statuary. This chapel was later to have terrible memories for Goering, but now it seemed to him, under Carin’s influence, like a revelation of spiritual peace and beauty.
    The small chapel in the garden and the sisterhood bound together through prayer under the emblem of a flower were to some extent influenced by the florid mysticism fashionable at the close of the nineteenth century—the mysticism which affected many poets of that time, and most of all the Irishman W. B. Yeats. One of the sisters, Princess Marie Elisabeth zu Wied, published in 1937 a book deriving from this faith and called The Inner Life. It is dedicated to “Hermann Goring, in friendship and gratitude.” 9
    Goering, impressionable, lonely and in love with Carin, was drawn into the cult of the Edelweiss Chapel. He wrote a sentimental letter to the Baroness, in imperfect Swedish:

    I should like to thank you from my heart for the beautiful moment which I was allowed to spend in the Edelweiss Chapel. You have no idea how I felt in this wonderful atmosphere. It was so quiet, so lovely, that I forgot all the earthly noise, all worries, and felt as if in another world. I closed my eyes and absorbed the clean, celestial atmosphere which filled the whole room. I was like a swimmer resting on a lonely island to gather new strength before he throws himself once more into the raging stream of life. I thanked God, and sent up warm prayers.

    The uncertain life of a pilot had less appeal now for Goering. He wanted to marry Carin and return to Germany. But there were many obstacles, among them his lack of a settled job and the unfavorable attitude of Carin and her family to the idea of a divorce. He decided he must go back and educate himself in preparation for work other than flying or soldiering. Early in the summer of 1921, he left Carin in Sweden and returned to Munich, where his mother still lived. There he enrolled at the age of twenty-eight as a student at the university, reading political science. Carin meanwhile visited Frau Goering in Munich and, as a result, finally decided to ask her husband for a divorce. Nils von Kantzow behaved with the greatest generosity and gave his wife money along with her freedom. This enabled Goering and Carin to marry and set up a home in Germany. The wedding took place in Munich on February 3, 1922. The Goerings’ first home was a hunting lodge at Hochkreuth in the Bavarian Alps, near Bayrischzell, some fifty miles from Munich, and it was there that they spent their honeymoon.
    Both husband and wife were ardent nationalists. Goering