The guest house still stands across the lake from the ruins, exactly as it did when it served the Reichsmarschall, and the man climbing out of his car knew it. He was not here to camp among the broken slabs and the snakes, though the idea had been put to him more than once. He was here to stay the night, in comfort, in a building built on Göring’s orders that had survived the demolitions of April 1945. The hotel desk accepted his booking.
The key turned in the lock. And so, nearly eighty years after the main house was blown sky-high, someone could claim, with complete accuracy, to have slept at Carinhall. It sounds like a contradiction. Everyone knows Carinhall was destroyed.
But more of Göring’s estate survives than is generally supposed, and it is scattered across the Schorfheide in plain sight. To understand how any of it survived, you have to go back to the beginning. In 1933, Göring was appointed Minister-President of Prussia, and he wanted a hunting lodge in the Schorfheide, the great forest north of Berlin. He had his eye on the Hubertusstock, a fine lodge built for King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia in 1849.
There was one problem: the owner in 1933 was the exiled Emperor Wilhelm II, living in the Netherlands, who objected to Göring taking possession. Casting around for another plot, Göring was gifted by Hitler the forest around a lake called the Großdöllnsee. The new house, named Carinhall in memory of his first wife, was designed by Werner March, the architect who would later build the Berlin Olympic Stadium for the 1936 games. Göring moved in in 1934.
It was then a modest two-story hunting lodge of 230 square meters, surrounded by guardhouses and a fence, and heavily guarded by members of the Hermann Göring Regiment. Göring paid nothing toward the lavish building. Hitler approved the funding in return for Göring hosting state guests and foreign dignitaries at the estate. Just over an hour and twenty minutes by car from Berlin, it became Göring’s playground, with excellent hunting and a growing collection of art.
In 1936, the lodge was extended, mostly to house those collections. Göring had cages built for pet lion cubs he borrowed from Berlin Zoo. He added a huge library, a hunting hall, a massive train set, and a multitude of other rooms. In 1938, following the birth of his only child, Edda, Göring ordered Carinhall extended again, doubling its size.
The major room constructed during this new phase was a 400-square-meter mess hall with panoramic views across the lake, along with a swimming pool, a new library, and a ballroom. Once again, Göring did not pay a single pfennig; the state picked up the bill. There was even the ultimate doll’s house on the side for Edda Göring to play in, an exact miniature of Sanssouci Palace. Göring also turned Carinhall into the unofficial headquarters of the Luftwaffe.
His plan, eventually, was to convert the building into a giant art museum, to be opened in 1953 to celebrate his 60th birthday. That plan would never come to pass. As the war turned against Germany, Göring had the defenses stiffened. A series of large air raid bunkers were built, and the guard detail from the Hermann Göring Division increased to 200 men.
Eventually, six flak towers protected the site. Göring even had a decoy Carinhall constructed 8 kilometers north to fool enemy bombers, manned 24/7 by a detachment of pioneers from the Hermann Göring Division. In the end, the Allied Air Forces never attacked Carinhall at all. Göring could fly in and out easily, using a small landing strip built 6 kilometers north of the estate at the edge of the Schorfheide forest.
It contained a couple of barrack blocks, a radio station, and a special camouflaged netted area to store his personal Junkers Ju 52 aircraft. The aircraft was kept ready for instant use at all times, and his personal pilots, Oberst Udet and Oberstleutnant Fechner, were always ready to fly the Reichsmarschall. In 1943, Göring ordered a large part of his art collection shipped south to the Altaussee salt mine in Austria for storage. Then, in January 1945, he moved more to Berchtesgaden, down the hill from his second holiday home near Hitler’s at Obersalzberg.
There, treasures were hidden in a special bunker beneath the Luftwaffe officers’ mess at Schönau am Königssee. The process of saving his art treasures continued until the very end of his power. More trains were procured and filled with all manner of art and personal effects, shipped to Berchtesgaden, where they would be found abandoned at the station when US forces arrived in early May 1945. A guard detail remained at the estate after Göring’s last departure.
He had left orders: if the Red Army got close, they were to demolish the main building. On the 28th of April 1945, the Luftwaffe guards did exactly that, reducing the estate to ruins using AZ Luftwaffe aerial bombs like giant mines. At war’s end, Göring surrendered himself to the Americans on the 7th of May 1945. Then the rumors started.
Göring himself began them, claiming he had secreted art and gold in tunnels beneath Carinhall, or had had them thrown into the Großdöllner Lake. Even today, people dig all over the site looking for this fabled treasure. In the weeks after the war, locals professionally stripped the remains of Carinhall, and huge amounts of valuable furniture, light fixtures, marble, and doors ended up in local homes, where some of it still remains today. Post-war, the East German authorities leveled whatever was left.
If you go to the site today, it is absolutely littered with parts of the houses, from tiny fragments to enormous multi-ton slabs, now largely covered by forest and home only to snakes and bats. A number of underground rooms and bunkers remain, regularly picked over by treasure hunters. He managed to get a little way inside a few. So what of the claim to have stayed at Carinhall?
It is not nonsense. One part of Göring’s estate remains completely intact today, and it is operating as a hotel. This building was the Carinhall guest house, built in 1934 to provide secure and comfortable accommodation for important dignitaries visiting Göring at Carinhall. It sits in a scenic spot just across the lake from the great house.
It has many features in common with the main house: a bronze ram at the entrance and similar fixtures and fittings inside, though on a more functional scale. In the Nazi era, the building was called the Schorfhaus, after Göring’s chief forester at Carinhall. It was overlooked in the destruction of the main house. In the post-war period, it was inside East Germany.
The East German leadership also enjoyed hunting, and in the 1960s, the Schorfhaus was requisitioned for use by the highest party leaders of East Germany. The entire site, including the ruins of Carinhall, was sealed off from the public and carefully guarded by the East German Army. In the 1970s, the guest house was trebled in size with the addition of two large wings and associated buildings: a swimming pool, a sauna house, and a special lecture-type theater for political meetings. When East Germany ceased to exist with German reunification in 1990, the Schorfhaus was sold and converted into a hotel called the Hotel Döllnsee Schorfheide.
He stayed there for one night, taking a room in the East German extension. A word of caution for non-Germans interested in staying there: it is deep within the old East Germany, where attitudes toward foreigners remain somewhat backward compared with Western Germany. The kindest thing he could say is that it is a hotel that caters to Germans. The views, however, are very nice, and the ruins of Carinhall are easily accessible on the other side of the lake.
And speaking of ruins, there are at least four other intact structures from Göring’s Carinhall besides the old guest house. Twin gate houses at the entrance to the main drive are completely intact, if a little battered. To the rear of them, you can see how the original brick walls were faced with high-quality granite in the past to give an expensive look. After nine decades, it is falling off.
A distinctive feature of both gate houses are carved representations of Göring’s rank: crossed Reichsmarschall’s batons, taken from his official standard. Immediately to the front of each gate house is an identical cottage, which served as barracks for part of the guard detail drawn from a special unit of Göring’s household troops, the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. There is one more relic, elsewhere. Only 70 kilometers south of Carinhall, at the German Military History Museum at the former RAF Gatow in West Berlin, a powder blue Reichsmarschall’s tunic and trousers hang on public display.
It is one of only a few surviving Göring uniforms that is indisputably authentic. The museum acquired it from none other than Göring’s widow, Emmy, in the early 1970s, initially on loan. In 2013, the museum was able to purchase it from Göring’s daughter, Edda. This very uniform was undoubtedly worn at Carinhall, for Göring had several in this color and style.
This example is unusual: instead of normal three-dimensional metal shoulder boards, like those seen on a summer uniform of Göring’s examined at the Imperial War Museum in London, it has a rare embroidered design. Completely authentic, nevertheless. So the ruins are there, the bunkers are there, the gate houses are there, the guest house is a hotel, and the uniform is behind glass in Berlin. Göring’s treasure was never found, and people still dig for it among the snakes and bats.
And for the price of a room, you can still sleep at Carinhall, no tent required.
