Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg

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Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born 3 July 1934 in Bamberg) is a retired German Bundeswehr officer.

He is the oldest of five children of Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg and nephew of Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, two German aristocrats who were active in the anti-Hitler July 20 Plot in 1944.

After the failed assassination and the subsequent executions, Claus's pregnant wife Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg was interned in a concentration camp, separated from her four children, who were taken to a foster home in Bad Sachsa. Until the end of the war, they had to use new family name, as von Stauffenberg was not accepted anymore. Berthold Maria von Stauffenberg was the oldest of the children, and had just turned 10 at the time.

Berthold graduated from Schule Schloss Salem and studied engineering before becoming an officer in West Germany's new army as soon as it was established in 1956. From 1972 to 1974, he was commander of tank battalion 11 in Munster, Lower Saxony, Germany's largest military base. His career culminated as Supreme Commander of Territorial Command South, and he retired in 1994 with the rank of Generalmajor, as Germany's oldest soldier after 38 years of service.

In 1958, he had married Mechthild Gräfin von Bentzel-Sturmfeder-Horneck von Oppenweiler (born 27 January 1938 in Bamberg), and moved to her family's hometown, Oppenweiler in Southern Germany.

In July 2004, for his 70th birthday and 60th anniversary of the plot, he was interviewed by several newspapers, and also invited to a ceremony at the former Wolfschanze.

In 2006, he participated with Richard von Weizsäcker and others in the opening ceremony of the von Stauffenberg -Memorial in Stuttgart.

In 2007, von Stauffenberg voiced concerns over the film Valkyrie, because the actor portraying his father, Tom Cruise, belongs to the Church of Scientology.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Staff. "Son of German general fears Cruise film could become 'horrible kitsch'", CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 24, 2007. 

[edit] Notes

Regarding personal names: Graf is a title, translated as Count, not a first or middle name. The female form is Gräfin.

[edit] External links