Following the 1938 Anschluss, the Nazis incorporated Austria into their German Reich.
Over the next few years, more and more antisemitic legislation was issued. They oppressed Jewish
civilians while slowly but surely Europe descended towards what would become the Second World War.
One of the men responsible was one of the most influential figures of the Nazi party:
Hermann Göring. Thanks to men like him, Nazi brutes had free reign to terrorise
Jewish civilians, as happened one day in Vienna. When a few Sturmabteilung thugs forced elderly
Jewish citizens on their knees to clean the cobbled streets, a crowd gathered and jeered.
But one man walked up, took off his coat and began scrubbing the streets with them in solidarity.
Angered at this seemingly German man’s civilian disobedience, the SA-men asked
for his identity documents. When he showed it to them, they abruptly halted the humiliating
practice and ordered the elderly people to go on their way. Because the identity documents
revealed this man was Albert Göring, brother of the second-most powerful man in the Nazi Reich.
Early Life
Albert was born to the German career diplomat Heinrich Ernst Göring and his wife Franziska
Tiefenbrunn. They had another 2-year-older child, Hermann, and three other children. Both boys
got along during their childhood, although their personalities were vastly different.
Hermann was more energetic and adventurous, whereas Albert was a bit more withdrawn and quiet.
Albert’s outward appearance was similar to that of his godfather, the physician
Hermann Epenstein Ritter von Mauternburg. German historian Christian Freitag writes that it was a
public secret Albert may have been his biological son. Epenstein acted as a surrogate father to
the five siblings due to the absence of their father posted in modern-day Namibia and Haiti.
Epenstein was half-Jewish and converted to Christianity, a near-irony if you consider
the rest of Hermann’s life trajectory. The boys grew up mostly in Epenstein’s
Burg Veldenstein, and spent their summers at Burg Mauternhof. Hermann was sent off
to military school, where he flourished, and Albert to a regular boarding school.
After the war, during an interrogation, Hermann said his brother and he were vastly different.
"He wasn't interested in politics or the military, and I was. He was quiet and withdrawn;
I loved gatherings and being sociable. He was melancholic and pessimistic; I’m an optimist."
During and right after the First World war, brother Hermann enjoyed legendary status in
Germany thanks to his position as a pilot and ace with 22 victories. He even commanded the Jasta 11,
the fighter wing commanded by the Red Baron until his death. Meanwhile,
Albert served as a communication engineer. In 1919 he enrolled in Munich’s Technical
University to study mechanical engineering. Albert briefly worked as a filmmaker in Vienna,
not enjoying any considerable success. But Hermann attended the Beer Hall scene in the
unstable Weimar Republic, believing in the stab-in-the-back myth, frustrated
by the Treaty of Versailles’s injustice, and being involved in ultra-nationalist circles.
In 1922, Hermann became a member of Hitler’s Nazi party. He worked his way up to become one of the
party’s most influential figures throughout the years and the newly established regime once the
Nazis came into power in 1933. Albert was quite the opposite,
however. He was a devout Roman-Catholic, rejecting antisemitism and even after Hitler rose to power
he openly criticised him, his ideas and his party. Still, after the failed beer-hall Putsch of 1923,
Hermann was critically injured by a bullet. He had to flee the country in the aftermath
and was institutionalised in Sweden. He became addicted to morphine, a habit he would never kick,
and Albert spoke disparagingly of his brother and his loyalty to ‘that bastard Hitler.’ The brothers
lost contact for twelve years. But according to Hermann, interviewed during the Nuremberg trials,
the brothers weren’t angry with each other. They simply didn’t talk because of the situation. When
the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert assumed Austrian citizenship instead.
Anti-Nazi
But when Austria was annexed in 1938, oddly enough, the brothers reconciled. They met at
Albert’s lodge in Grinzing, a town northwest of Vienna. Albert was exhausted when he met
his brother. Unbeknownst to Hermann, Albert worked around to clock to issue visas, travel documents,
and gave money to Jewish friends and political dissidents to flee the country before the Nazis
gained complete control of Austria’s bureaucracy. The rest of the family was there as well. Hermann
was bubbly with excitement. His party just managed to incorporate Austria into their German Reich.
High on life (and perhaps morphine) he told his family they could each have a wish. Albert
and his sister Olga requested Hermann to release the elderly Archduke Josef Ferdinand of Austria,
the last Habsburg Prince of Tuscany, imprisoned in Dachau. The next day the old man was released,
although the imprisonment permanently ruined his health, and he passed away in 1942.
Albert ran the risk of arrest and being sent off to a concentration
camp because of his public stance against Hitler. Yet he remained unapologetic,
and whenever he was arrested his last name usually was enough to have him released. There have been
certain occasions where Hermann himself had to personally intervene to have his brother released.
But Albert’s last name gave him unexpected influence as well, and over the years, he used his
brother’s status for his own selfless acts. One of the most well-known surviving anecdotes must
be that of the elderly Jewish civilians forced to scrub Vienna’s cobbled streets. Albert joined in
only to have the Nazis blow off the humiliation once they realised he was Hermann’s brother.
Throughout the entire war, Albert refused to hang a painting or photo of Adolf Hitler in his office,
something which was customary. He also declined to bring the salute.
But Albert also actively helped political and Jewish refugees leave Austria,
issue them travel documents, warn them of impending arrests, and give funds. When his
former employer, film-producer Oskar Pilzer, was arrested because of his Jewish roots,
Albert used his name and brother’s status to have Oskar and his brother released from
imprisonment and get them out of the country. The Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Léhar was
married to a Jewish wife. At a certain point, authorities began to threaten the couple with
deportation to a camp. They contacted Albert through mutual friends. Residing in Bucharest
at the time, he arranged that Léhar’s wife received the official status as Aryan.
When the Second World War broke out, Göring moved to Pilsen which was part of the then-protectorate
of Bohemia and Moravia, current day Czech Republic. He became the local Skoda factory’s
export manager. There are anecdotes of him actively disrupting the German war industry
at the homefront. Documents released after the war revealed he supported the Czech resistance.
Closeby the factory was the hybrid concentration camp and ghetto Theresienstadt. On more than one
occasion, Albert dispatched large trucks to Theresienstadt with the request to supply
prisoners for forced labour in his factory. But when the trucks returned, loaded with prisoners,
he’d release them in the forests. Anecdotes survive of bombs produced
in the Skoda factory filled with sand. He often openly voiced his defeatist convictions,
convinced Hitler was losing the war and the propaganda was lying to the German people.
Albert played with fire. Throughout the war his name popped up on multiple Gestapo
arrest warrants. Three in total. General of the Prague police, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Frank,
described Albert as ‘a defeatist of the worst sort.’ But whenever he made attempts to arrest
him, older brother Hermann intervened. Any other person would have certainly been slapped with a
one-way ticket to prison or a concentration camp, but time and time again, Albert’s name
saved him from the most severe punishment. Albert frequently visited his brother,
who primarily resided in Berlin. Supposedly, the bond between Hermann and him was quite well during
the war. On more than one account Albert pleaded with his brother to release Jewish or political
prisoners. Most likely keen to show his degree of influence, which Albert aptly manipulated,
Hermann often agreed to do so. Albert even impersonated his
brother. When a doctor and resistance member was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp,
Albert used his brother’s personal letter-writing paper to write the camp’s commander and demanded
the prisoner’s release. To be sure, the Dachau commander released two men with the same name,
which goes to show how much weight Göring’s name carried in the Nazi Reich.
In 1944, when it became clear Germany lost the war, a final Gestapo warrant demanding Albert’s
execution on sight was published. It was the last time Hermann, whose position was severely
weakened in the Third Reich, was able to help his younger brother. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary
anymore either. In May 1945 the Second World War officially ended. Although Albert stood at
the right side of history, his name would prove to be a significant obstacle to any recognition.
After the War
When the Allies defeated Germany and the Nazi regime crumbled, Hermann and Albert saw each
other one last time in a transit jail. The former Reichsmarshall requested Albert to take care
of his wife and children since he most likely knew his fate. Hermann was sentenced to death
but managed to bite a smuggled cyanide capsule before the Allies led him to the hangman’s noose.
But Albert was arrested as well. He was interrogated after the war and imprisoned
for two years, merely by virtue of his last name. According to interrogation reports,
nobody believed Albert opposed the Nazi regime, making a mocking of both him and his brother.
Depressed and heavy-hearted, Albert decided to pen down a list of 34 names of prominent
people he saved. Nowadays, these five dog-eared papers are housed in the US National Archives.
The Allies called him as a witness at Nuremberg, and it wasn’t until people
who survived the war because of him testified on his behalf that the Allies released him.
Unable to find work with his cursed last name, Albert moved to Argentina,
living there for several years. Unfortunately, Albert’s post-war life wasn’t over roses. His
Czech wife divorced him and took their only daughter, Elizabeth, with her. Albert descended
into a black hole of alcoholism and depression. Unemployed for extended periods of time, people
whose life he saved financially supported him. A few years later, he returned to Germany and
lived in Bavaria, making ends meet as a translator and designer for a construction company.
Growing up in large castles in a family that owned estates, he lived his final years in a small flat
in Munich. Now, usually, within marriages, when a partner dies, the pension is given to the widow.
Albert, after his divorce, went out with a final act of selflessness. He married his housekeeper
a few months before he died so that she could enjoy his modest pension for the rest of her life.
Albert passed away in 1966, impoverished and alone. For many years the world mostly forgot
about him. Yad Vashem didn’t include him in their Righteous Among the Nations, even though the
people he rescued petitioned for them to do so. In 2009 the Australian journalist William Burke
published the book ‘Thirty Four’, a study into Albert’s life. Interestingly enough
Albert Göring wasn’t the only Göring to reject the Nazi party. One of their cousins, Werner Göring,
emigrated to the United States before the war broke out. A pilot in the US Army Air Corps,
Werner flew 48 missions above Germany in his B-17 bomber. His co-pilot supposedly received secret
orders to execute him if he appeared to land in Germany and desert. Another cousin, Henchz,
resided in Poland and was executed when he opposed to an SS squadron executing his Jewish neighbours.
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