By Pat Poland
By his own admission, Richard ‘Dickie’ Beamish, born in 1909 into the famous Cork brewing family of Ashbourne House, Glounthaune, Co. Cork, never wanted to be head of the firm. As a young man he was a free spirit and could not envisage being confined to a dreary desk, crunching boring numbers from nine to five, day in, day out. While still very small, he used to steal a ride on the brewery barges transporting stout down to Midleton. He would later work through a succession of jobs, as he recalled in a 1976 interview:
‘I remember as an apprentice engineer literally shooting down Dead Woman’s Hill on the Blackrock Road in a tram at full speed and only by turning the brass brake and cutting the power we would surely have all been killed. Later, I worked as a purser on a ship plying between New York and St John’s, Newfoundland. Then, I drove a train between Paddington, London, and Hastings, earning £6.10s.0d a week plus a voucher for 9d worth of beer!’
Eventually he settled down and began his long career with Beamish & Crawford by being put in charge of the outgoing post and petty cash.
LETTER TO HERMANN GÖRING
Back in 1937, however, not content with exploring every nook and cranny of his native county, Dickie decided that he wanted to visit the one European country that seemed to dominate the headlines every time he opened a newspaper. His natural curiosity aroused, he needed to see for himself, at first hand, what all the fuss was about. So, in typical direct fashion, he wrote a personal letter to the second most powerful figure in Nazi Germany, Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and widely tipped as the man who would eventually take over from Adolf Hitler.
With the value of hindsight and considering what we now know of what was going on in Germany, his action might be regarded as rash, the deed of a naïve, thoughtless young man. But this was no run-of-the-mill letter from a member of the public requesting an audience with a government official, for Beamish and Göring’s first wife, Karin, were first cousins.
KARIN FOCK
Karin was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1888. Her father, Commander Baron Carl Fock, was a Swedish army colonel from a family that had emigrated from Westphalia, Germany. Her mother, Huldine Beamish, born in 1860, was the great-great-granddaughter of William Beamish, co-founder in 1792 with William Crawford of the Cork brewery that would by 1805 be the largest in Ireland and the third-largest in the UK, with an annual output of 100,000 barrels. It remained Ireland’s largest brewery until overtaken by Guinness in 1833. Karin was the fourth of five daughters. In 1910 she married an army officer, Baron Niels Gustav von Kantzow.
Hermann Göring had had a distinguished career as a fighter pilot in the Great War, being decorated with many awards, including the Iron Cross and the most coveted of all, the Pour le Mérite—the famous ‘Blue Max’. In 1918 he was promoted officer-in-charge of the renowned ‘Flying Circus’ once commanded by Baron von Richthofen, the so-called ‘Red Baron’. After Germany’s defeat, Göring’s expertise was much in demand amongst businessmen flying between Germany and Scandinavia.
One stormy winter’s evening in 1920, he was hired by the Swedish aristocrat Count Erik von Rosen to fly him to his castle near Stockholm. With the weather closing in and the plane unable to take off, the count invited the pilot to stay the night. While chatting at the fireplace with his host over a warming glass of schnapps, Göring looked up and saw a tall, elegant woman coming down the grand staircase towards him. He thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. Count von Rosen introduced his sister-in-law, Baroness Karin von Kantzow, to the 27-year-old dashing ex-fighter pilot.
Karin’s sister Mary later remarked that, for both, ‘it was love at first sight’. Karin was described as ‘a maternal, unhappy, sentimental woman’, five years older than Göring. She was also an ardent Nazi. They were soon carrying on an adulterous relationship. Having left her husband and son, Karin lived openly with Göring in Stockholm until, after her divorce, they married on 3 February 1923. During the following years Karin enthusiastically embraced the Nazi creed and vigorously encouraged her husband in his rise to prominence in the Party. She nursed him back to health after he was wounded marching at Hitler’s side during the so-called Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. The strain and stress of it all took its toll, however, and she died of heart failure within days of her 43rd birthday in October 1931. At the funeral Göring was overcome with grief, throwing himself on the coffin and weeping inconsolably. Karin was interred in the Fock family plot on the small island of Lovön, near Stockholm.
Returning in 1933 to attend the wedding of Karin’s niece, Göring slipped away to place a large wreath of red roses, in the shape of a swastika, on her grave. The event was widely reported in the Swedish press and anti-Nazis removed the wreath, leaving the following message on the tombstone: ‘Sweden is offended by using a graveyard for propaganda. Let the dead rest in peace.’ Indignant, Göring resolved to build his own permanent resting-place for her in Germany—Karinhall—where one day he would join her. Completed in just ten months, the fabled mansion was situated in the Schorfheide, a vast rolling forest some 50km north-east of Berlin, comprising lakes and beautiful meadowland.
PROMPT REPLY
Beamish received a prompt reply from Göring, and in September 1937 he and his wife Ernestine set off for the Continent:
‘It was all overwhelming for us. I really didn’t expect to get a reply to my letter, but I did, and my wife and I found ourselves in Cobh embarking for Le Havre and Hamburg, en route to Berlin.’
They had pre-booked a room at the modest Eden Hotel but were soon directed by an official to go to the plush Hotel Kaiserhof, Berlin’s most expensive establishment. Situated right next to the Reich Chancellery in the city’s government quarter, it had every conceivable ‘mod con’. After a few days, Dickie realised that if they stayed any longer he wouldn’t have enough money to settle the bill, so he organised a telegram recalling himself and his wife back to Cork urgently. To his surprise, when he went to settle the account, he was told that everything had been taken care of by their host, Hermann Göring.
The next day they were invited to lunch with Göring at the nearby Air Ministry. Dickie described the brass band playing Wagner as they entered, and the burnished mahogany tables reflecting the beautiful, glittering chandeliers. As they enjoyed their food, and the schnapps and wine flowed freely, they were suddenly made aware of a Chaplinesque figure standing in a doorway. It was none other than Hitler himself, who briefly acknowledged the assembly and moved on, prompting the jocose remark from Gӧring: ‘Am I not lucky, Herr Beamish, that because the Führer dislikes pomp and ceremony, I can indulge myself so much?’
Karinhall
Soon after, the Beamishes set off for Karinhall. According to Dickie,
‘An Air Force car was put at our disposal, and it took three-quarters of an hour to travel up the driveway to the house which consisted of a main building, a large wing for the servants, and a wing for guests forming three sides of a square. The roof was thatched. The main reception hall was all white and gold mosaic, with a fountain, edged with semi-tropical flowers, playing in the centre. Guests lived in the lap of luxury, being provided with a lady’s maid, a valet, and a hairdresser. The mansion had its own swimming pool.’
Beamish could not know that in a few short years Gӧring and Karinhall would be major beneficiaries of the Nazi confiscation of art and wealth from those who, across the length and breadth of occupied Europe, were deemed ‘enemies of the Reich’.
The Beamishes stayed in Karinhall for two nights and were seen off by Gӧring, who was going to Bavaria to shoot wild boar. His attire made such an impression on Beamish that even after almost 40 years he could still remember every detail:
‘He wore a grey flannel shirt and jewelled brooch across the collar, silver tie, sleeveless grey waistcoat, grey flannel “Plus Fours”, grey silk stockings, grey suede shoes, and a large, jewelled belt. Little did he know then what fate held in store for him, I couldn’t help thinking.’
GӦRING REMARRIES
In June 1934, Karin’s coffin had been exhumed from the graveyard in Lovön, draped in a swastika flag and transported to Karinhall, where it was interred in a Viking-like mausoleum in an elaborate ceremony attended by Hitler. The original coffin was placed in one made of zinc, and this in turn was placed in a tin coffin.
Yet just ten months later Göring raised not a few Third Reich eyebrows when, in a wedding ceremony fit for an emperor, he married the actress Emmy Sonnemann, by whom he had a daughter, Edda. Her birth, on 2 June 1938, was celebrated by 500 Luftwaffe aircraft flying over Berlin. Emmy always had to live in the shadow of Karin’s memory, made even more all-pervasive by the presence of the ‘other woman’s’ mortal remains permanently lying in state within the grounds, and a large painting of her on display in her husband’s study. In 1939 Hitler officially declared Göring his successor and the following year created the rank of Reichsmarschall for him, giving him authority over all of Germany’s armed forces.
SPERRGEBEIT
On 20 April 1945, with the sound of the Russian artillery booming in the distance, Göring ordered the complete destruction of his beloved Karinhall, apparently making provision for Karin’s remains to be disinterred and buried secretly elsewhere on the vast estate. Notwithstanding, a body was found by invading Russian soldiers, who decided to let it lie. Later, a sympathetic forestry worker reburied the remains at yet another location in the forest.
In 1950 the former Göring estate, now deep within the Communist GDR, was designated a Sperrgebeit—a prohibited area. The forestry worker, at great risk to himself, concealed the remains in a sack and spirited them into West Berlin, where they were handed over to the Swedish authorities and cremated early in 1951. In October 1951 the urn was finally interred in the original Lovön churchyard. For all intents and purposes, Karin Göring, Dickie Beamish’s cousin, had come home to rest with her own people in Sweden.
That, at least, was the received wisdom up to 2013. But some 22 years earlier, something had happened that would cause the story to be rewritten: the Soviet Union collapsed. With its fall, the GDR had ceased to exist, and the once-forbidden Göring estate became a magnet for souvenir-hunters. Over the years they descended on the Schorfheide, convinced that they would find a missing masterpiece or priceless statue among the rubble and undergrowth. And eventually they did find something: a chest containing human remains, which was forwarded to the National Board of Forensic Medicine in Sweden for analysis. Using the most up-to-date methods and equipment, the scientists concluded in January 2013 that the bones were those of Karin Göring, long thought to be buried on Lovön island in Sweden.
These remains were reinterred in the family plot in Lovön churchyard in the presence of family members. This time there were no swastika-draped carriages, no goose-stepping automatons and no bands playing Wagnerian dirges. Karin had made her final voyage home alone.
POSTSCRIPT
Dickie Beamish went on to become chairman and managing director of Beamish & Crawford, later becoming president for life of the company. One former employee summed him up thus: ‘He had a wonderful sense of humour. He called a spade a spade, and never harboured a grudge. He was an out and out gentleman.’ He passed away in 1993, aged 84. Hermann Göring was indicted at Nuremburg on war crimes charges. Found guilty, he cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell.
One question remains unanswered: if not Karin’s, whose remains were reinterred in Lovön back in 1951?
Pat Poland is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Further reading
R. Beamish, ‘War was brewing when ale chief met Goering’, Cork Examiner, 21 April 1976.
A. Kjellström, H. Edlund, M. Lembring, V. Ahlgren & M. Allen, ‘An analysis of the alleged skeletal remains of Carin Göring’, PLoS ONE 7 (12) (2012), e44366 (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044366).
D. & D. Ó Drisceóil, Beamish & Crawford: the history of an Irish brewery (Cork, 2015).
R.J. Overy, Goering: the iron man (London, 2020).