Carin Axelina Hulda Göring (21 October 1888 – 17 October 1931) was the Swedish first wife of Hermann Göring.
She was born Carin Fock in Stockholm in 1888. Her father Commander Baron Carl Fock was a Swedish Army colonel, from a family who had immigrated from Westphalia. Her mother, Huldine Fock (née Beamish; b. 1860), was from an Anglo-Irish family famous for brewing Beamish and Crawford stout in Cork. Her great-great grandfather William Beamish was one of the founders of Beamish and Crawford. Her English grandfather had served in Britain's Coldstream Guards. Carin's maternal grandmother founded the private religious sisterhood, Edelweiss Society. She was the fourth of five daughters, her sisters were named Mary von Rosen (b. 1886), Fanny von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (b. 1882), Elsa and Lily.
She became Carin von Kantzow upon her marriage in 1910 to a Swedish army officer, Baron Niels Gustav von Kantzow. They had one child, Thomas von Kantzow, born in 1912.
In 1920, when she was estranged from her first husband, she met Hermann Göring at Rockelstad Castle. He was five years her junior and was then working as a commercial pilot in Sweden for Svenska Lufttrafik. He had flown Count Eric von Rosen to the castle through a snowstorm and the two freezing men went in to heat up in front of the fireplace in the Hall. Carin, who's sister Mary was the Countess, was visiting for the weekend and when Goring saw her come down the stairs he fell immediately in love. When Carin and Göring started seeing each other in Stockholm it caused a scandal in the high-society, for Carin was married and had a young child. She became divorced from von Kantzow in December 1922.[1]
After their marriage on 3 January 1923 the Görings first lived in a house in the suburbs of Munich. When Göring was badly injured in the groin while marching alongside Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Carin transported him to Austria, then on to Italy, and nursed him back to health.[2] In the 1930s Carin and Goring's romantic love-story was used by Goebbel's propaganda machine and the couple toured around the nation to boost popularity.[3]
She suffered from tuberculosis during her later years. When her mother, Huldine Fock died unexpectedly on 25 September 1931 it came as a great shock to the 42-year-old Carin. She was admitted to a sanatorium for her own weak heart condition after this. The following year, after returning to Sweden, she died of heart failure on 17 October 1931, four days prior to her 43rd birthday. She died before Hitler gained power.[4]
Her death came as a great blow to Göring. He named the baronial hunting lodge he built from 1933 Carin Hall, in her honour. It was there that he had her body reinterred from her original grave in Sweden, in a funeral attended by Adolf Hitler. He filled Carin Hall with images of Carin. He also did the same in his apartment in Berlin, where Göring created an altar in memory of her which remained even after he remarried in 1935. Carin Hall was later demolished under Göring's orders as Russian troops advanced in 1945. Carin's remains were later recovered by the Fock family, cremated and re-buried in Sweden.
After her death Carin's older sister Fanny wrote a biography of her which quickly became a bestseller in Germany. By 1943 it had sold 900,000 copies.
Carin's sister, Mary Fock (1886–1967), was married to Count Eric von Rosen (1879–1948), one of the founding members of Nationalsocialistiska Blocket, a Swedish Nazi political party.