Goering Read Free Page A

godchildren.
    A domineering man, Epenstein was punctilious in his demands and insistent on receiving a proper degree of respect. He would lose his temper if his guests were so much as a minute late for meals. He was small, dark and fat, obsessed by the sense of class, though his father had been no more than an Army suigeon in Berlin. He liked to pretend he was the son of a court surgeon, and he acquired his title of Ritter von Epenstein by donations presented in the right quarters. His lifelong friend was a Dr. Thirring, whose two sons were later to be among his many godchildren; one of them, Professor Hans Thirring, was to become a distinguished physicist.
    Epenstein remained a bachelor, traveling a great deal and enjoying life. He practiced little as a doctor, though he attended Franziska in Africa when she bore her first child. When he decided to settle, it was Dr. Thirring who found him the castle of Mauterndorf in Austria, not far from the border with Bavaria. Epenstein spent a great deal of money on the restoration and furnishing of this castle, re-creating in it the heavy and pompous atmosphere of German medievalism that so stirred the young imagination of his godchild Hermann. After Heinrich Goering had returned to Germany Epenstein bought a second and smaller castle called Veldenstein, fifteen miles from Nuremberg; he offered this new property, which was a house built onto the ruins of an ancient Franconian fortress of the eleventh century, to the Goering family as a home. Here Herman Goering was finally settled with his elder brother, his two sisters and his younger brother, Albert.
    Veldenstein always appeared to him to be the family seat. While the world of his father represented Prussia with its militarist etiquette, its rigorous uniforms, its pompous parades and its memories of Bismarck, the rich world of his godfather represented medieval Germany. Its romantic castles gave him his first vision of medieval splendor in the magnificent scenery of the Bavarian mountains and excited in him a desire for feudal power that he was never to lose. He was already headstrong and spoiled, dominating his elder brother and sisters and displaying his aggressive instincts at the first sign of any opposition or restraint. He lived out of doors as much as he could, his eyes on the dark slopes of conifers stretching up to the Alps that even as a child he longed to climb.
    It was at Veldenstein that Franziska, Goering’s mother, lived as Epenstein’s mistress. Her elderly and complacent husband had to accept this situation on humiliating terms. Epenstein kept the finest bedroom in the establishment for himself, while Franziska slept in a hardly less well-appointed room situated conveniently close by. Heinrich Goering was not admitted to this part of the house; he had to sleep on the ground floor. When the family visited Epenstein at Mauterndorf, Hermann’s father was lodged in a house that stood apart from the castle. He was content, or pretended to be so, with the dignity left him in the title of Minister-Resident that had gone with his colonial governorship. (His son was later to refer to him always as “the Minister President.” ) In his old age he found some remaining comfort in drinking and skittles, and he exercised little or no control over his second family of young children. Franziska was to remain Epenstein’s mistress for some fifteen years; it was perhaps ironic that the relationship should finally break down just before Heinrich Goering’s death.
    Nominally Epenstein was a Christian, having been baptized in childhood. But he was of Jewish family and appearance, and his name appeared in the “ Semi-Gotha ” of the time, a volume in which all titled families of Jewish descent were listed. He was a man who liked to be regarded as the benefactor of numerous children, who were all encouraged to address him as Pate or Godfather. Not only the five children of the Goering family enjoyed this