Did Hermann Goering have Jewish Ancestry?
As part of my series of articles discussing current or possible future allegations and/or rumours of jewishness attached to senior members of the Third Reich: we will next discuss Reichsmarshall and World War One German Fighter Ace Hermann Goering. Now I have heard anecdotal claims that Goering has jewish ancestry before and I have also found at least one person speculating about the possibility on the internet. (1)
Thus I think it is worth just nipping this one in the bud before anyone else comes along trying to claim otherwise.
Goering's father Heinrich Ernst Goering was fifty-six when he married Goering's mother Franziska Tiefenbrunn in May 1885. (2)
Heinrich was a descendant of an illustrious line of ancestors and the earliest that has been traced is Michael Christian Goering in the seventeenth century. (3) We know of no jewish ancestors of the Goering family and the assertion that the Eberlin family - who the Goerings may or may not have intermarried with - were 'converted jews' (4) is purely speculation and not rooted in any archival documentation as far as I can discover.
Therefore there is no reason to suppose there is any jewish ancestors on Goering's paternal side.
When we turn to Franziska: we find that she was a country girl from a poor Bavarian family and therefore hardly likely to be of jewish origin. (5) She did however conduct an affair with a wealthy corpulent jewish doctor named Hermann Epenstein.
Epenstein, who purchased his title and changed his named to 'von Epenstein', was renowned for purchasing sexual favours from non-jewish women and did so with Franziska by providing a free home for the family. (6)
We know that Hermann couldn't have possibly been fathered by Epenstein as Franziska was pregnant with him when she left Haiti with her husband: (7) although Epenstein was Hermann's godfather. (8) However his brother Albert Goering is a different story as he was born about a year after Franziska began her affair with Epenstein and there is a strong physical resemblance between Epenstein and Albert.
The general consensus is - correctly in my view - that Epenstein was Albert's father. (9) This would also incidentally explain Albert's being the 'black sheep' of the family and refusing to have anything to do with the NSDAP and the Third Reich (since he may well have been aware of who his real father was and that he was a jew). (10)
Given all of this then it is fairly obvious that Hermann Goering was not jewish in any way, shape or form. He has no known jewish ancestry and while he had a jewish godfather as well as a jewish step-brother: neither of these make him a jew himself.
References
(1) http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=513201
(2) David Irving, 1989, 'Goering: A Biography', 1st Editon, MacMillan: Basingstoke, pp. 25-26
(3) Ibid., p. 25
(4) http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=513201
(5) Irving, Op. Cit., pp. 25-26
(6) Ibid., pp. 26-27
(7) Ibid., p. 26
(8) Ibid., p. 25
(9) James Wyllie, 2010, 'Goering and Goering: Hitler's Henchman and his anti-Nazi Brother', 2nd Edition, History Press: Stroud, p. 5
(10) Ibid., p. 1; Irving, Op. Cit., p. 26