Hermann Göring - Early Life

Early Life

Göring was born on 12 January 1893 at the Marienbad sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria. His father, Heinrich Ernst Göring (31 October 1839 – 7 December 1913), a former cavalry officer, had been the first Governor-General of the German protectorate of South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia). Heinrich had five children from a previous marriage. Herman was the fourth of five children by Heinrich's second wife, Franziska Tiefenbrunn (1859–15 July 1923), a Bavarian peasant. Hermann's elder siblings were Karl, Olga, and Paula; his younger brother was Albert. At the time Göring was born, his father was serving as consul general in Haiti, and his mother returned home briefly to give birth. She left the six-week-old baby with a friend in Bavaria and did not see the child again for three years, when she and Heinrich returned to Germany.

Göring's godfather was Dr. Hermann Epenstein, a wealthy physician and businessman his father had met in Africa. Epenstein was a Christian of Jewish descent whose father was an army surgeon. He provided the Göring family, who were surviving on Heinrich's pension, with a family home in a small castle called Veldenstein, near Nuremberg. Göring's mother became Epenstein's mistress around this time, and remained so for some fifteen years. Epenstein acquired the minor title of Ritter von Epenstein through service and donations to the Crown.

Interested in a career as a soldier from a very young age, Göring enjoyed playing with toy soldiers and dressing up in a Boer uniform his father had given him. He was sent to boarding school at age eleven, where the food was poor and discipline was harsh. He sold a violin to pay for his train ticket home, and then took to his bed, feigning illness, until he was told he would not have to return. He continued to enjoy war games, pretending to lay siege to the castle Veldenstein and studying Teutonic legends and sagas. He became a mountain climber, scaling peaks in Germany, at the Mont Blanc massif, and in the Austrian Alps. At sixteen he was sent to a military academy at Berlin Lichterfelde, from which he graduated with distinction. Göring joined the Prince Wilhelm Regiment (112th Infantry) of the Prussian army in 1912. The next year his mother had a falling-out with von Epenstein. The family was forced to leave Veldenstein and moved to Munich; Göring's father passed away shortly afterward. When World War I began in August 1914, Göring was stationed at Mulhouse with his regiment.