Count Carl Gustaf Bloomfield Eric von Rosen (born June 2, 1879 in Stockholm, died April 25, 1948 Skeppsholmen, Stockholm) was a Swedish Honorary doctor, patron, explorer, ethnographer and prominent figure in the Swedish upper class. von Rosen was married to Baroness Mary Fock (1886–1967)
Rockelstad and Hermann Göring
Eric von Rosen had made himself known as a pioneer in Swedish aeronautics after his crossing the Baltic Sea during the Finnish War of Freedom in 1918. Later on he sometimes used aeroplanes for transports in Sweden and abroad. This was the case the 21st of February 1920, when he had been in Stockholm and needed urgently to go to Rockelstad. The trains were all cancelled due to bad weather, so the Count went to the small airfield in Stockholm. The Swedish pilots were unwilling to head out in the snowstorm that late, but a German former fighter-pilot, Hermann Göring, was available.
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Rockelstad Castle[/caption]Eric and Göring flew through the snow-storm towards Rockelstad; they flew low along the railway until they reached Sparreholm, where they turned south across the lake and landed on the ice below Rockelstad. They tied the plane to the steamboat jetty and the two freezing men went in to heat up in front of the fireplace in the Hall. Countess Mary's sister, Carin von Kantzow, was visiting this weekend, and when she came down the stairs Göring immediately fell in love.
When Carin and Göring started seeing each other in Stockholm it caused a scandal in the high-society, for Carin was married and had a young child. The pair moved to Germany later that year, where Göring soon leaned about a group of revolutionaries in Munich; Hitler and his henchmen, who had started with demonstrations on the streets. Göring soon travelled to Hitler, who welcomed the national war hero into the party. Karin was divorced from von Kantzow in December 1922 and married Göring on 3 January 1923. After their marriage, the Görings first lived in a house in the suburbs of Munich. Carin followed her husband and became a member of the Nazi Party. When Göring was badly injured in the groin while marching alongside Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Carin took him to Austria, then on to Italy, and nursed him back to health.
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Carin Göring[/caption]Carin suffered from tuberculosis by her early forties. When her mother, Huldine Fock, died unexpectedly on 25 September 1931, it came as a great shock to the 42-year-old Carin. Although her health was still fragile, she went to Sweden for her mother's funeral.The next day, she suffered a heart attack in Stockholm. On the news reaching Göring, he joined her there and stayed with her until she died of heart failure on 17 October 1931, four days before her 43rd birthday. After her death, Carin's older sister Fanny wrote a biography of her which quickly became a bestseller in Germany. By 1943, it had sold 900,000 copies.
Carin's death came as a great blow to Göring. In 1933 he began to build a hunting lodge, which became his main home, and named it Carinhall in her honour. It was there that he had her body re-interred from her original grave in Sweden, in a funeral attended by Adolf Hitler. Göring filled Carinhall with images of Carin, as he did his flat in Berlin, where he created an altar in memory of her which remained even after he remarried in 1935. Carinhall was demolished on Göring's orders as Soviettroops advanced in 1945.
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Görings estate Carinhall a little bit north of Berlin. It was build as memory of Carin, and blown away by Hermann Göring in the end of January 1945 when the Russians came.[/caption]Eric von Rosen and the Swastika
Eric von Rosen found swastikas on a Viking rune-stone on Gotland, where he went through high-school. This seemed to him a typical Viking symbol, and as such it held great appeal to the nationalistic young Count. The Vikings used the swastika as a symbol of light and happiness. When Eric was preparing for his first expedition, the one to South America in 1901, he had swastikas painted on his crates and luggage, to separate them from those of the other participants. This way of choosing for oneself a personal emblem or token of luck, was common and fashionable at that time. During his travels among the descendants of the Inca in Bolivia, he was surprised to see how often their textiles were adorned with swastikas, and realised that this was a universal symbol that had been used by many cultures all over the world.
When he started rebuilding at Rockelstad the next year, he used the symbol as a decorative element everywhere in the house. They are easily spotted in the ceiling of the Great Hall, where they are painted green on a red background. The Hall was finished in 1903. When he planned his spectacular hunting-lodge in 1910, the architect Tengbom was commissioned to design a group of furniture in Old Nordic style, decorated with carved swastikas.
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The first airplane of the Finnish Air Force, the Thulin D, donated by Eric von Rosen.[/caption]Being a friend of Finland, he gave the newly independent state an aircraft adorned with his symbol signifying the beginning of the Finnish Air-force.
The Swastika, though blue with a white background, was adopted as the Symbol of the Air-force of Finland. The aeroplane that von Rosen bought in 1918, to support the Finnish fight for independence, was painted with large blue and white swastikas on its wings before it was delivered to General Mannerheim.
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NSB (***) poster from 1935, announcing a meeting with Eric von Rosen as main speaker.[/caption]***National Socialist Bloc (in Swedish: Nationalsocialistiska Blocket) was a Swedish national socialist political party formed in the end of 1933 by the merger of Nationalsocialistiska Samlingspartiet, Nationalsocialistiska Förbundet and local National Socialist units connected to the advocate Sven Hallström in Umeå. Later Svensk Nationalsocialistisk Samling merged into NSB. The leader of the party was the Colonel Martin Ekström. The party maintained several publications, Landet Fritt (Gothenburg), Vår Kamp (Gothenburg), Vår Front (Umeå), Nasisten (Malmö) and Riksposten. NSB differentiated itself from other Swedish National Socialist groups due to its liaisons with the Swedish upper class. NSB was clearly smaller than the two main National Socialist parties in Sweden at the time, SNSP and NSAP. Gradually the party vanished.
Sources: http://www.rockelstad.se and Wikipedia
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