GENERAL GOERING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22056, 12 March 1935, Page 9

GENERAL GOERING

MARRIAGE TO ACTRESS HITLER TO BE BEST MAN (ReceiTed March 11, 5.5 p.m.) BERLIN, March 10 General Goering, Premier of Prussia, is to be married on April 11 to Frauloin Emmy Sonnemann, a beautiful blonde " star " of the Prussian State Theatre, which General Goering controls. Fraulein Sonnemann is in her twenties. She has also appeared on the films. General Goering is a widower. Herr Hitler will be best man at the wedding, which will be the greatest social event of recent times in Berlin. As Premier and Home Minister of Prussia, and Cbief of the Secret Police, General Hermann Goering has wielded immense power in Germany during the past 15 months. It has been said of him that no honest German believes. he has any qualification for running the State theatres—his most recent selfimposed task. Even many of his sincerest Nazi admirers are beginning to think that his work, which is essentially destructive, is finished. The gentle Roman Catholic Bavarians regard as something of an alien the fanatical Prussian Protestant who shows no.

mercy. General Goering of late was said to be becoming an increasingly lonely figure. The one person with whom he enjoyed real friendship—his Swedish wife—died in 1931. In his Berlin home, adorned with an executioner's sword, and portraits of Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Balbo, and Baron von Richthofen (famous German airman who was shot down in March, 1918) there iB a room dedicated to her memory.

General Goering is 42 years old, having been born in Bavaria in January, 1893. In 1912 he became a lieutenant in an infantry regiment in Alsace. It was one of the -first to take the"'field when war broke but and fought in the early battles ,in France. In October he joined ithe air force as an observer, and then piloted a fighting aeroplane. A member of Baron von Richthofen's famous " Death Squadron," he became its leader after the baron was killed. With the rank of captain he left the army and held posts in civil aviation concerns in Denmark and Sweden. He spent 1922-23 at Munich University, studying history, economics and political science. Goering took - a prominent part in the Hitler rising in 1923 and was wounded in the fighting. His friends smuggled him into the Tyrol in a motor-car. After a time, us he did not feel safe in Austria, he went 'to Rome where he got to know Signor Mussolini. In 1925-26 he was in Sweden, but after the amnesty in 1927 he returned to Germany and settled in Berlin. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1923 as a Hitlerite. At the elections on July 31, 1932, the Hitlerites were returned as the strongest party and the Papen-Schleicher Cabinet had only about 30 supporters in the House. It therefore induced President Hindenburg to give it powers to dissolve the Reichstag. At its first meeting Goering was elected Speaker of the House. 10-da,v General Goering is regarded as the strongest leader of his party, next to Herr Hitler—hard, ruthless, uncompromising, but with it all possessed of a striking sense of responsibility.