Hermann Göring married actress Emmy Sonnemann in Berlin Cathedral with great pomp - and with Hitler watching on
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Three days before the end of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Emmy Göring and her husband Hermann - who would become Hitler’s second in command - held a spectacular event for hundreds of guests that featured a moonlit ballet, a fairground with roundabouts, a café and beer tents, and a procession of white horses, donkeys, and actors dressed as peasants.
This was not the first or last extravaganza hosted by Emmy and her husband during their years as one of the Reich’s most prominent couples, parading around Berlin like an Emperor and Empress from ancient times. Emmy was suited to life in the spotlight: she’d been a professional actress for more than a decade by the time she met Göring in 1932, while he was still mourning the death of his first wife Carin, a devoted Nazi.