Fromms: How Julis Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis (15 page)

Left to right: Hermann
Epenstein von Mauternburg
,
Hermann Göring
,
Elisabeth Epenstein
von Mauternburg in
Mauterndorf, 1916

The close relationship between Hermann Göring and his godfather, whom he regarded as a second father, remained intact. When Göring was severely wounded in 1916 as a fighter pilot, he stayed with the Epensteins at Mauterndorf Castle. At the end of his convalescence, he traveled to Castle Veldenstein with Elisabeth Epenstein, whom he called Lili, and who saw herself as the godmother of the Göring children and friend of their widowed mother. Göring’s mother awaited them there. Göring later married Carin von Kantzow, a Swedish woman from a poor family with an aristocratic heritage. He also joined the National Socialist Party and had to flee the country in the aftermath of the failed Nazi putsch in 1923. Through it all, he continued his friendship with the Epensteins.

Immediately following the annexation of Austria in March 1938, he and his second wife, Emmy—Carin Göring had died in 1931—visited Mauterndorf Castle. He arrived with a large military escort and enjoyed an enthusiastic welcome. The lady of the manor was in a gloomy frame of mind, however. Her husband had died in 1934, at the age of eighty-four, and she was anxious about her godchild Albert (Göring’s younger brother), who was working in film studios in Vienna and made no secret of his antipathy for the Nazis. She also feared that the National Socialists would start a war.

It is not known whether Göring and his godmother took this occasion to discuss the swap of Fromms Act for castles that took place shortly thereafter, but it seems likely. After the death of her husband, Elisabeth Epenstein had found a new partner, a retired Viennese lieutenant colonel and merchant named Otto Metz-Randa. “He was not handsome, but he was charming,” Frau Epenstein’s niece recalled, “and he knew something about finances.” Metz-Randa saw little reason to own castles, since they just ate up money and yielded no profits. In his view, the more
attractive option was to use the capital from Elisabeth Epenstein’s historical real estate to make lucrative investments.

On left: Hermann Göring in Mauterndorf, March 1938
On right: Aryanizer Elisabeth Epenstein, 1938

Whatever plan Göring and Frau Epenstein may have hatched in March 1938, Göring was finally in a position to reciprocate for the decades of his godfather’s benevolence, and about four months later, Elisabeth Epenstein bought Fromms Act. She was also given a large piece of property—about 2,500 acres—in Gösing (Lower Austria), which had a horse and chicken farm as well as a luxury hotel with a staff of about a hundred workers and administrators. It had belonged to the Jewish timber industrialist Sigmund Glesinger of Vienna. Before he was able to emigrate to the United States, he had to Aryanize his possessions. This transaction
was surreptitiously overseen by Göring, and his godmother reaped the rewards. On December 16, 1938, Fritz Langthaler, the provisional manager, informed the district authorities: “The Aryanization of [Glesinger’s] companies has been implemented with the authorized bill of sale, and I ask you to see to it that these companies are no longer listed in the directory of ‘Jewish Businesses.’ Heil Hitler.”

The anti-Semitic novel
In the Shadow of the Ötscher
(1943), by an Austrian regional writer named Lorenz Peter Herzog, gives a fictional account of this case. Glesinger (called Schlesinger in the novel) is here the imperious “company president from Frankfurt … who buys up everything” and recklessly modernizes it: “Tear down the portal, remove bearing walls, a couple of crossbeams, concrete floor, done!” His plans are thwarted by “an alliance between Berlin and Vienna,” which makes people like Glesinger “disappear at very short notice” and ensures that “an end is put to the bankers of the other race who are worth millions.” In Gösing (called Hinterburg in the novel) “something was actually being done for the good of the community.”
⁴⁹

February 1939 was the last time Elisabeth Epenstein visited the man who had helped her acquire the rubber factories and the country estate. He proudly showed her around Carinhall, his hunting lodge in Schorfheide, a vast forest north of Berlin. She then instructed her lawyer to transfer the ownership of Castle Veldenstein to Göring and his younger sister Edda as her gift to them.

Shortly thereafter she traveled to Chicago to visit her stepbrother. Before her departure, her lover, Otto Metz-Randa, persuaded her to draw up her will. The will named him executor of her estate. This document, which contained twenty-seven clauses, stated that Mauterndorf Castle was also to go to Hermann Göring.
Clause 14 read: “I bequeath my factory (Fromms Act Rubber Works), that is, the property and business as well as the property and business of the Fromms Act Rubber Works, Inc. in Danzig, to Colonel Otto Metz-Randa, Vienna V, Schönbrunnerstrasse 12.” The country estate in Gösing also went to Metz-Randa.

Elisabeth Epenstein with her lover and adviser Otto Metz-Randa, 1937

He was not the only one slated to profit from the condom business. Elisabeth Epenstein directed that even if “the factories lacked the raw materials to continue operations, Frau Olga Rigele would be paid 1,000 Reichsmarks a month; Frau Göring, Berlin, 500 Reichsmarks a month; and Frau Paula Hueber 500 Reichsmarks a month” from the “rubber works” profits. These three beneficiaries were Göring’s two married sisters and an unspecified “Frau Göring.”

During the war, Hermann Göring spent most of his time at the grandiose hunting lodge of Carinhall. He rarely visited Mauterndorf, but he did have a swimming pool built there. He lavished more attention on Castle Veldenstein, and in 1942 had
an air-raid shelter constructed under the manor, with its own air, water, and electric supply. He also had the driveway paved with asphalt. On Easter 1945—with the Red Army already at the outskirts of Berlin—he paid a visit to Veldenstein in his
Schienenzeppelin
(a Zeppelin-shaped railcar). “Here he dressed down the contractors busy with the renovations,” Eitel Lange, his personal photographer, later reported. “He said to the supervisor: ‘I demand the fastest possible work from you and from every man in the contracting firm—now! If I return to find anything not in order, right down to the last nail, I will get nasty.’”
⁵⁰

No sooner had Elisabeth Epenstein returned to Mauterndorf from America on September 4, 1939, than she was found dead in her bed. Her niece, who still resides in Mauterndorf, attributes this sudden death at the age of fifty-three to her “chain smoking and constant coffee drinking to keep from getting fat.”

E
XILE
: H
ELPLESS IN
L
ONDON

JULIUS FROMM WAS FIFTY-FIVE YEARS OLD
when, in October 1938, he had to leave the country that had become his homeland. He and his wife traveled to Paris to visit their son Max, and a few weeks later they went on to London, where Herbert and his wife, Ellen (née Friedländer), were already living. Back in Berlin, Ellen’s father had owned Friedländer & Grunwald, a company that made feather dusters; the factory was located in the same industrial complex on Elisabethstrasse where Fromm had for a time manufactured his condoms. Fromm had established excellent business contacts in the British Empire, which made London a logical choice for his forced relocation. He aimed to build on his past success and set up a new factory.