Albert Günther Göring (9 March 1895 – 20 December 1966) was a German engineer and businessman and the younger brother of Hermann Göring (the head of the German Luftwaffe and a leading member of the Nazi Party).
Biography[]
In contrast to his brother, Albert was opposed to Nazism, and he helped Jews and others who were persecuted in Nazi Germany. He was shunned in post-war Germany because of his family name, and he died without any public recognition and received very little attention for his humanitarian efforts until decades after his death.
Göring seemed to have acquired his godfather's character as a bon vivant and looked set to lead an "unremarkable life" as a filmmaker, until the Nazis came to power in 1933. Unlike his elder brother Hermann, who was a leading party member, Albert Göring despised Nazism and the brutality involved.
Many anecdotal stories exist about Göring's resistance to the Nazi ideology and regime. For example, Albert is reported to have joined a group of Jewish women who had been forced to scrub the street. The SS officer in charge inspected his identification, and ordered the group's scrubbing activity to stop after realizing he could be held responsible for allowing Hermann Göring's brother to be publicly humiliated.
Albert Göring used his influence to get his Jewish former boss Oskar Pilzer freed after the Nazis arrested him. Göring then helped Pilzer and his family escape from Germany. He is reported to have done the same for many other German dissidents.
Göring intensified his anti-Nazi activity when he was made export director at the Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia. He encouraged minor acts of sabotage and had contact with the Czech resistance. On many occasions, he forged his brother's signature on transit documents to enable dissidents to escape. When he was caught, he used his brother's influence to gain his release. Göring also sent trucks to Nazi concentration camps with requests for labourers. The trucks would stop in an isolated area, and their passengers were then allowed to escape.
After the war, Albert Göring was questioned during the Nuremberg Tribunal. However, many of those he had helped testified for him, and he was released. Soon afterwards, Göring was arrested by the Czechs, but he was again released when the full extent of his activities became known.
On his release, Göring returned to Germany, but was shunned because of his family name. He found work occasionally as a writer and translator, and he lived in a modest flat far from the baronial splendour of his childhood. In his last years, Göring lived on a pension from the government. He knew that if he married, on his death the pension payments would be transferred to his wife. As a sign of gratitude, he married his housekeeper in 1966 so she would receive his pension. One week later, Albert Göring died without his wartime anti-Nazi activities having been publicly acknowledged.
Although Göring lived out his last years in Munich in Bavaria, he died further away in a hospital in Neuenbürg in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg.]