GOERING'S CARINHALL

The Schorfheide

rbb-series: "Mysterious Places"

Author & Director:

Daniel Ast | Juergen Ast

Commissioning Editors:

Jens Stubenrauch

Duration:

45' | World Sales: NEW DOCS

Producer:

Daniel Ast | Juergen Ast

Coproduction:

astfilm productions | RBB

Hermann Goering was not the first, and not the last potentate to leave his traces in the Schorfheide, but he was the most unscrupulous and certainly the most megalomaniac of all. For the very first time, the story of Carinhall is presented with the memories of eyewitnesses, excellent archive material, thrilling new film footage, and interviews with the leading experts.

As early as 1933, Goering a passionate hunter, gave instructions to build a very extravagant hunting lodge. All costs were to be covered by the government of the German Reich. He named the place after his first, late wife Carin. She was laid to rest in an extra build monumental tomb on the land that was to become a myth, Goering's Carinhall. In the years to come, Goering expanded. He perfectioned the secluded and romantic place next to the Great Doelln Lake, created his own stage for his own "big screen". Heads of states and diplomats shake hands in Carinhall: the king of Sweden, the emperor of Siam, Mussolini ... With pride Goering presents his own "Reich". Lions, a spectacular park, his valuable art collection, and two huge model railways. As self-declared "Lord of the Schorfheide", as first forest ranger, and first hunter of the German Reich, Goering extremely well knows how to "orchester" the game of hunting and power.

With the beginning of the war, Goering more and more met with the military at Carinhall. It is from here, where the air raids of the aerial warfare are coordinated, and where the plans for the genocide in the East are first discussed. The longer the war lasted, the more Goering needed the escape into his "own world", full of Illusions. The hunting, the stealing and collecting of art, the delusion of an even more gigantic residence, of all this the addicted "Reichsmarschall" was dreaming, till the end. For his 60th birthday in 1953, Goering planned the opening of a gigantic museum, a place to show his art collection. Thousands of pictures and objects that were presented to him, or bought, or stolen from all over Europe. Value at the time, estimated 600 million Reichsmark, today billions of US-Dollars.

Even during the trial in Nuernberg, Goering recalled the great times in the Schorfheide, in Carinhall. He had his part in the mystery-mongering about the Schorfheide, about buried treasures, trying to make a deal to escape the rope of the executioner. Till today Goering's former residence in the Schorfheide, the monumental Carinhall, is the source of rumors and legends. The documentary follows the traces of a disappeared place that still is full of secrets.