Bin Laden or Goering: what’s in a surname?

Bin Laden or Goering: what’s in a surname?Graham Stewart: Pass Notes
Osama bin Laden has yet to post a video passing on his good wishes to his new daughter-in-law, a surgically enhanced multi-divorcee parish councillor from Cheshire. Possibly the middle-aged Englishwoman, Jane Felix-Browne, is not what he had in mind for his 27-year-old son, Omar Ossama. But love is blind.

To be fair to Ms Felix-Browne, it is difficult marrying into a family with a tainted name. It was a brave Israeli who married Heinrich Himmler’s great-niece, Katrin. At least, he did not have to adopt her surname.

Who, for instance, would want to become Frau Goering? Yet, this all supposes that the Goerings, like the bin Ladens, are tarred with the same brush. In fact, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering’s ascent in the Nazi Party produced more than mixed feelings from his siblings.

 

Such are the complexities of family bonds that, right to the last, Goering remained loyal to his younger brother, Albert, despite Albert’s best attempts to make clear he despised everything his more famous brother stood for. Albert even renounced his German citizenship and established himself as a Viennese filmmaker and womaniser.

But even dissolute figures can have principles. While others concluded that resistance meant certain death and averted their eyes, Albert realised he could use his surname as a shield for speaking out. When he saw SS officers forcing elderly Jewish women to scrub pavements, he pushed through the crowd of hooting onlookers, stripped off his jacket, grabbed a mop and got on his hands and knees to share the punishment. The incensed SS officer backed off when he realised with whom he was dealing.

It also helped to be able to sign documents “Goering”. In this way he saved countless Jews from certain death in his role as a deliberately inept director at the Skoda armaments factory. The Gestapo were on to him, but he managed to slip through their clutches.

The tragedy of Albert Goering was that the surname that allowed him to make a stand during the Third Reich’s rise was the surname that condemned him following the Reich’s collapse. After he surrendered to the Americans, the interrogators refused to believe his protestations. He faced years in prison until his claims were finally verified. Following his release, his marriage collapsed and he eked out a miserable living as a translator. Nobody wanted to honour his name. He died, in obscurity, in 1966.

Yet, he did his best to remove the taint from a surname. Hermann Goering’s descendant, Matthias, recently said: “I used to feel cursed by my name. Now I feel blessed.” Matthias is embracing Judaism. It is certainly worth Omar and Jane bin Laden pondering what legacy they wish to bequeath those bearing their surname.