I checked into a hotel in the middle of the German forest, a few days ago, and only later did I realize exactly what I was sleeping in. The building had been standing since 1934, built on the personal orders of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. It was the guesthouse to Carinhall, his sprawling estate, and it survives to this day in perfect condition. The main house was blown to pieces in April 1945, but this building, the old Schorfhaus, was overlooked in the demolition.
No one had told me that when I booked the room. I found out while standing in the lobby, staring at a bronze ram by the entrance, a decorative touch that matched the main house across the lake. I was staying in a piece of Nazi history that most people assume no longer exists. Göring built Carinhall as his personal playground in the Schorfheide, north of Berlin, and he named it after his first wife, Carin.
In 1933, he had wanted a hunting lodge called Hubertusstock, built for King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, but the exiled Emperor Wilhelm II, who owned it, refused to hand it over. So Hitler gifted Göring forest around the Großdöllnsee instead. The new house was designed by Werner March, the same architect who later built the Berlin Olympic Stadium. Göring moved in during 1934.
It began as a two-story hunting lodge of 230 square meters, surrounded by guardhouses and a fence, heavily protected by members of the Hermann Göring Regiment. Göring himself paid nothing for it. Hitler approved all the funding, because Göring was expected to host state guests and foreign dignitaries there. It sat only an hour and twenty minutes by car from Berlin, and Göring turned it into his private paradise.
The hunting was excellent, and the rooms filled up with his growing art collection. By 1936, the building was extended just to hold all the things he kept acquiring. He had cages built for lion cubs he borrowed from Berlin Zoo. There was a huge library, a hunting hall, and a massive model railway.
In 1938, after the birth of his only child, Edda, Göring ordered the house doubled in size again. A 400-square-meter mess hall was added, with panoramic views across the lake, along with a swimming pool, a new library, and a ballroom. Again, he paid not a single pfennig. The state covered the entire bill.
There was even a miniature replica of Sanssouci Palace built beside the house, a giant doll’s house for little Edda to play in. Carinhall also became the unofficial headquarters of the Luftwaffe. Göring’s long-term plan was to turn the entire estate into a giant art museum, scheduled to open in 1953, to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. When the war turned against Germany, he strengthened the defenses.
Air raid bunkers were built, the guard detail from the Hermann Göring Division grew to two hundred men, and six flak towers protected the site. Göring even had a decoy Carinhall built eight kilometers north, complete with a permanent detachment of pioneers, to fool enemy bombers. The Allied Air Forces never once attacked the real estate. Göring also had a landing strip six kilometers north, where his personal Junkers Ju 52 was kept ready at all times, with pilots standing by to fly him wherever he needed to go.
By 1943, Göring realized the war was slipping away. He ordered a huge part of his art collection shipped south to the Altaussee salt mine in Austria. In January 1945, more treasures went to Berchtesgaden, hidden in a bunker beneath the Luftwaffe officers’ mess at Schönau am Königssee. Trains loaded with art and personal effects kept rolling south until the very end of his power.
When US forces arrived in early May 1945, they found those trains abandoned at Berchtesgaden station. Göring left Carinhall for the last time with strict orders to his guard detail on what to do if the Red Army got close. On the 28th of April 1945, the Luftwaffe guards did exactly that, demolishing the main house with aerial bombs used like giant mines, reducing it to ruins. Göring surrendered to the Americans on the 7th of May.
After that, he started rumors that he had hidden art and gold in tunnels beneath Carinhall, or thrown them into the Großdöllnsee. Even today, people dig all over the site looking for that fabled treasure. In the weeks after the war, locals stripped the remains professionally, taking furniture, light fixtures, marble, doors, and loaded them into their own homes, where much of it still remains. The East German authorities later leveled whatever was left.
If you visit today, the site is littered with pieces of the houses, from small fragments to enormous multi-ton slabs, now covered by forest and home to snakes and bats. Several underground rooms and bunkers still remain, regularly picked over by treasure hunters. I managed to get a little way inside a few of them. The guesthouse across the lake, the Schorfhaus, was a different story.
It had been built in 1934 to house important dignitaries visiting Göring, in a scenic spot just across the water. It shared many features with the great house, including that bronze ram at the entrance, though on a more functional scale. It took its name from Göring’s chief forester at Carinhall. While the main house was demolished, the guesthouse was left untouched.
After the war, it sat inside East Germany, and in the 1960s, the East German leadership requisitioned it for their own hunting parties. 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 guesthouse was trebled in size with two large wings and additional buildings, a swimming pool, a sauna house, and a special theater-style hall for political meetings. When German reunification came in 1990, the Schorfhaus was sold and converted into a hotel, the Hotel Döllnsee Schorfheide.
I stayed there for one night, in a room in the East German extension. A word of caution for any non-Germans thinking of booking it: it sits deep inside the old East Germany, where attitudes toward foreigners remain somewhat backward compared with the west. The kindest thing I can 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 the ruins aren’t the only remaining parts of Göring’s estate. There are four other intact structures besides the old guesthouse. Twin gatehouses at the entrance to the Carinhall main drive are completely intact, if a little battered. You can still see where the original brick walls were faced with high-quality granite to give an expensive look, though after nine decades it is now falling off.
Both gatehouses carry a distinctive feature: carved representations of Göring’s rank, crossed Reichsmarschall’s batons taken from his official standard. Immediately in front of each gatehouse sits an identical cottage, which were barracks for part of the guard detail from the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. So there it is. You can still stay at Carinhall if you want to, a fact barely known outside the area, and you don’t have to rough it under canvas either.
Another relic of Göring is on public display only seventy kilometers south, at the German Military History Museum at the former RAF Gatow in West Berlin. That powder blue Reichsmarschall’s tunic and trousers is one of only a few Göring uniforms that is indisputably authentic. The museum acquired it from Göring’s widow, Emmy, in the early 1970s, initially on loan, and in 2013 they were able to purchase it outright from Göring’s daughter, Edda. That uniform was undoubtedly worn at Carinhall, as Göring had several in that color and style.
This particular example is unusual because, instead of the normal three-dimensional metal shoulder boards, it has a rare embroidered design. But it is completely authentic. I stood there in that hotel, in a building commissioned by one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, and I thought about all the dignitaries who had slept in those same rooms before me. The guesthouse was still standing, beautiful and functional, while everything around it had crumbled into the forest floor.
I stayed the night, slept in a bed that had once sheltered Göring’s guests, and in the morning I walked across to the ruins, where the only sound was the wind through the trees.
