small self-important Saxon wearing a polka-dot bow tie and sin-
gle-medal ribbon earned in the artillery, he attached himself to
Göring as unpaid secretary and chauffeur. It was an ideal part-
nership he had some money but no ideas, Göring the reverse.
Chauffeuring his own Mercedes, Körner drove Göring around
as he tried to sell parachutes. There were, Körner later said, hard
times that neither of them would ever forget, and the old crav-
ing gradually overwhelmed Göring again.
Occasionally a thin, pathetic voice came from the Stock-
holm sanitarium where Carin had piously placed herself in
God’s hands. The doctors had now told her that her condition
was hopeless, and she wrote and told Göring that on January ,
, soon after he left. “You have a right to know the truth,”
she wrote, “because you love me and have always done every-
thing for me.”
I have no fear of death... I want only that His
will be done, because I know that what He wills is for
the best for everyone. And, darling, if there is no
God, then death is only rest, like an eternal sleep
one knows no more of anything. But I firmly believe
that there is a God, and then we shall see each other
once more up there.
Naturally I should like to live so that you have no
sorrow and for Thomas’s sake, and because I love you
and Thomas above everything else and want yes, I
want it terribly to stay with both of you.Without her rapturous love, sensed by Göring from afar, he
would probably have foundered forever in Berlin’s twilight
world of addicts and down-and-outs. But she threw her fragile
weight into the battle for his survival, writing letters that are
among the most moving documents in the Hermann Göring
story.