Edda Göring is the only child of Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring. On the spectrum of Nazikinder, she’s between the unrepentant apologists (Gudrun Himmler, Thorwald Eichmann) and the ashamed (Martin Borrmann, Jr., Niklas Frank), though closer to the former than the latter.
Upon the invasion of the Rhineland in 1936, Göring was awarded an engraved silver chalice which after a long odyssey has been rediscovered. A court ordered that the chalice be turned over to Edda Göring as its rightful heir. The chalice has major auction potential due to its history and the number of wealthy WW2 collectors.
In your opinion, does Edda have a right to inherit her father’s property gained while he was an official of the Nazi party? In the past she has sued for photograph albums, medals, furniture, and even a castle bequeathed to her father before the war by the widow of his Jewish godfather, and always her litigation has been unsuccessful. (Göring is an enigmatic character, a man whose defense of his Jewish godfather saw him expelled from boarding school and who allowed numerous penniless Jewish actors and artists to leave the country, yet who also began the concentration camps and extorted fortunes from the Rothschilds and other wealthy Jews before signing their exit papers; he was also Hitler’s staunchest defender at Nuremberg even though had Hitler lived another week he probably would have had Göring and his family executed.)
Here’s an article on the subject if you’re interested:
Copyright 2002 Newcastle Chronicle & Journal Ltd
March 15, 2002, Friday Edition 1
Chalice quest police seek Goering family
A nazi chalice at the centre of a blackmail trial may be handed over the daughter of one of Hitler’s right-hand men.
The 12in high silver cup is believed to have been made for Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering to mark the German invasion of the Rhineland in 1936.
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I am certainly not an expert on this subject at all, but here’s what I think.
He was given the chalice. As his daughter, Edda would seem like the logical person to inherit the chalice upon his death.
My answer would be different had he obtained the chalice in another way - say by stealing it from a victim in a concentration camp.
So since he got it through “legitimate means” (albeit by being party to a heinous practice), I’d say it’s hers.
Am I missing something here? Has property of Nazi party members previously been given to someone other than their descendents? [pardon if that’s a naive question, but I’m not sure what the issue is here!]
The property of most of the Nazi leaders was confiscated after the war. Göring, for example, was one of the wealthiest men in Europe prior to the war, owning a vast estate in the Schorfheide (Carinhall, named for the wife who shared his poverty while he was an exile and drug addict), mansions in Berlin, Munich, and Vienna, castles in Austria and Bavaria, and of course the largest art collection in history (not all of it stolen). Within weeks after his arrest, his wife and daughter were sharing a room in a run down apartment, each of them reduced to one dress apiece. Most other high-ranking officials had similar stories. (Albert Speer became a multimillionaire from his writings after release from Spandau and some of the Argentina bound managed to smuggle wealth out of the country.)
Moderator’s Notes: Mr. Snopes, as you can see, I’ve deleted a large portion of the article you posted above. There’s a reason I’ve done so. The answer to that question is told by the very first line of that article, which I’ve taken the liberty of bolding and underlining—it’s copyrighted, and obviously so. The Chicago Reader, owners and operators of this message board, as a publisher and relying heavily on U.S. copyright law, takes a very active and serious interest in keeping copyrighted works from being posted here. Please do not do this again. You may post small excerpts from copyrighted works and then provide a URL where interested parties may find the remainder; you may not post copyrighted works in their entirety, or even large portions of them.
And normally, I don’t do this, I ask the offending poster to perform the task himself, but here’s the URL to the deleted article from the Newcastle Chronicle & Journal Ltd.
Chalice quest police seek Goering family.
Please be more careful in the future. Thank you.
Why punish the relatives? Let her have it. Sheesh, it’s been, what, 57 years?
Hmm. Knowing that, Snopes, it does seem inconsistent.
I wonder if it makes any difference that it’s not really the “spoils of war”, so to speak. It seems more like a trophy or remembrance. Like if I was involved in a group, and they gave me a plaque for heading up some big get together.
Of course, since it’s rumored to be worth a boatload of money, I’m sure that’s what’s clouding the issue.