| Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld | |
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| Prince of the Netherlands (more) | |
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| Tenure | 6 September 1948 – 30 April 1980 (31 years, 239 days) |
| Spouse | Juliana of the Netherlands |
| Issue | |
| Queen Beatrix Princess Irene Princess Margriet Princess Christina Alicia von Bielefeld Alexia Grinda |
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| Full name | |
| Bernhard Leopold Frederik Everhard Julius Coert Karel Godfried Pieter of Lippe-Biesterfeld | |
| House | House of Lippe |
| Father | Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld |
| Mother | Armgard of Sierstorpff-Cramm |
| Born | 29 June 1911 Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach |
| Died | 1 December 2004 (aged 93) Utrecht, Netherlands |
| Burial | 11 December 2004 Nieuwe Kerk, Delft |
| Occupation | Military Officer (Inspector General) Aviator (Air Marshal) |
| Religion | Dutch Reformed |
Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (29 June 1911 – 1 December 2004), later Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was prince consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and father of six children, including the current monarch Queen Beatrix.
Although his private life was rather controversial, Bernhard was a decorated war hero and was generally regarded as a charming and popular figure by the majority of the Dutch for his performance as a combat pilot and his activities as a liaison officer and personal aide to the Queen during World War II, his work during post-war reconstruction, and for assisting specific individuals.
During World War II the German-born prince was part of the London based Allied war planning councils and an active RAF wing commander flying both fighter and bomber planes into combat. He was a Dutch general and supreme commander of the Dutch Armed forces, involved in negotiating the terms of surrender of the German army in the Netherlands.
For proven bravery, leadership and loyalty during his wartime efforts he was awarded the rank of knight commander in the chivalric Military William Order, the oldest and highest honour in the Netherlands. After the War he was also made honorary Air Marshal of the RAF by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1969, Bernhard was awarded the Grand Cross, Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Bernhard helped found the World Wildlife Fund (later renamed World Wide Fund for Nature), becoming its first president in 1961. He also established the 1001 Club: A Nature Trust in 1970 to fund the organization.
He was one of two founders of the international Bilderberg Group, which meets yearly in order to discuss the future of the world and issues concerning Europe and North America as it relates to corporate globalization. He was forced to step down from both groups after being involved in the Lockheed Bribery Scandal.
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Bernhard was born Bernhard Leopold Friedrich Eberhard Julius Kurt Karl Gottfried Peter of Biesterfeld in Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, German Empire the elder son of Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (younger brother of Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe, the reigning Prince of Lippe) and Armgard of Sierstorpff-Cramm. Because the marriage of his parents did not properly conform to the marriage laws of the House of Lippe and was therefore morganatic, Bernhard was born with the title of "Count" only. In 1916, the Reigning Prince of Lippe, Leopold IV, granted Bernhard the title of "Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld".
After World War I, Bernhard's family lost their German principality and the revenue that had accompanied it. But the family was still wealthy and Bernhard spent his early years at Reckenwalde, the family's new estate in East Brandenburg thirty kilometers east of the River Oder, (now the village of Wojnowo, Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland), near the city of Züllichau (Sulechów). He received his early education at home. When he was twelve, he was sent to board at the gymnasium in Züllichau and several years later to board at a gymnasium in Berlin, from which he graduated in 1929.
Bernhard suffered from poor health as a boy. Doctors predicted that he would not live very long. This prediction might have been the key to Bernhard's reckless driving and the risks that he took in the Second World War and thereafter. The prince wrecked several cars and planes in his lifetime.
Bernhard studied Law at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and in Berlin, where he acquired a taste for fast cars, horse riding, and big-game hunting safaris. He was nearly killed in a boating accident and an airplane crash, and he suffered a broken neck and crushed ribs in a 160 km/h (100 mi/h) car crash in 1938.
While at university, Bernhard joined the Nazi Party and the Sturmabteilung, which he left in 1934 when he graduated.[1] The Prince was not a Nazi by conviction; these memberships made life easier for an ambitious young man. The Prince later denied that he belonged to SA, but these are well-documented memberships. This German aristocrat was never a fierce champion of democracy, but there are no accounts of him ever having made fascist or anti-semitic remarks.
The Prince eventually went to work for the German chemical giant IG Farben, then the world’s fourth-largest company (which survives today as BASF, AGFA, and Bayer). After training, he became secretary to the board of directors at the Paris office in 1935. Because he was a Protestant of royal rank (the Lippe-Biesterfelds were a sovereign house in the German Empire), Bernhard was acceptable to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands as a suitable husband for her daughter Princess Juliana. Bernhard’s appropriateness as consort of the future Queen would later become a matter of some public debate.
Prince Bernhard’s political affiliations with the Nazi regime have received much attention. Various members of his family and acquaintances were aligned with the Nazis prior to and during the war, and a number of them joined the royal wedding party on 7 January 1937 in The Hague. Protocol demanded that the prospective prince-consort be invited to an audience with his head of state, who at the time was Adolf Hitler. Hitler himself gives a rendering of the conversation he had with Bernhard in his Tisch Gespräche (Table Conversations). Table Conversations was a collection of monologues, remarks, and speeches Hitler gave during lunch or dinner to those invited to the table by him. Bernhard himself has called Hitler a tyrant in a public speech on the BBC.
The Prince’s brother, Prince Aschwin of Lippe-Biesterfeld, was an officer in the German army. Although the secret services on both sides were interested in this peculiar pair of brothers, no improper contacts or leaks of information were discovered. The Prince showed himself to be a loyal Dutch citizen and officer. He cut off relations with the members of his family who were enthusiastic Nazis. As a sign of his “Dutchness” he spoke only Dutch when negotiating the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands. The Prince was known to be very fond of smart uniforms and medals. He made a point of wearing his medals in the English court style, even though members of the Dutch armed forces wear their medals in the Prussian style.
The Prince’s mother was no admirer of the Nazis and got into trouble for refusing to hoist the swastika flag on her country seat at Reckenwalde.
Prince Bernhard began to make himself popular and trusted in the eyes of the Dutch people at the outset of World War II. During the German Invasion, the Prince, carrying a machine gun, organised the palace guards into a combat group and shot at German planes. The Royal Family fled the Netherlands and took refuge in England. In disagreement with Queen Wilhelmina's decision to leave the Kingdom, the young prince consort aged 28, initially refused to go and wanted to oppose the Nazi occupation from within its borders, but eventually agreed to join her as head of the Royal Military Mission based in London. Once safely there, his wife Princess Juliana and their children went on to Canada, where they remained until the end of the war.
In England, Prince Bernhard asked to work in British Intelligence but the War Admiralty, and later General Eisenhower's Allied Command offices, did not trust him sufficiently to allow him access to intelligence information. However, on the recommendation of Bernhard's friend and admirer, King George VI, who was also of German aristocratic descent via his great-grandfather Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and after being personally screened by intelligence officer Ian Fleming on behalf of Churchill, he was later permitted to work in the Allied war planning councils.
On 25 June 1940, three days after France fell to the German war machine, Bernhard spoke on the Overseas Service of the BBC, calling Hitler a German tyrant and expressing his confidence that Great Britain would defeat the Third Reich.
In 1940, Flight Lieutenant Murray Payne instructed the prince to fly a Spitfire. The Prince made 1,000 flight-hours in a Spitfire with the RAF's 322 "Dutch" squadron wrecking two planes during landings. He remained an active pilot throughout his life and flew his last airplane 53 years later, with his grandson and heir to the throne, who inherited his passion for flying.
In 1941, Prince Bernhard was given the honorary rank of wing commander in the Royal Air Force. He then trained as a pilot and gained his wings later that same year. As "Wing Commander Gibbs (RAF)", Prince Bernhard flew over occupied Europe, attacking V-1 launch pads in a B-24 Liberator, bombing Pisa and engaging submarines over the Atlantic in a B-25 Mitchell and conducting reconnaissance over enemy-held territory in an L-5 Grasshopper. Prince Bernhard was awarded the Dutch Flying Cross for his "ability and perseverance" (Dutch: "bekwaamheid en volharding").[2]
From 1942 to 1944, Bernhard flew as a pilot with the Royal Air Force. He also helped organise the Dutch resistance movement and acted as personal secretary for Queen Wilhelmina.
Queen Wilhelmina erased the word "honorary" (the exact words were " à la suite") in the decree that promoted Bernhard to General. In this unconstitutional manner, she gave this Royal Prince a position that was never intended by either Parliament or her ministers. The minister of defence did not choose to correct the Monarch and the Prince took a real and important role in the Dutch Armed forces.
By 1944, Prince Bernhard became Commander of the Dutch armed forces. After the liberation of the Netherlands, he returned with his family where he became active in the negotiations for the German surrender. He was present during the armistice negotiations and German surrender in Hotel de Wereld ("The World Hotel") in Wageningen in The Netherlands on 5 May 1945, where he refused to speak German.[3][4] The Prince was a genuine war hero in the eyes of most of the Dutch and even kept cordial relations with the communists who fought against the Nazis. In the post-war years the popular Prince earned respect for his hard work in helping to reinvigorate the economy of the Netherlands.
After the war, the position of Inspector General was created for the Prince. He was made a member of the boards of supervisors of Fokker Aircraft and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and within a few years he had been invited to serve as an adviser or non-executive director of numerous corporations and institutions. There have been claims about KLM helping Nazis to leave Germany for Argentina on KLM flights while Bernhard was on its board[3]. After a 1952 trip with Queen Juliana to the United States, Prince Bernhard was heralded by the media as a business ambassador extraordinaire for the Netherlands.[5]
With his global contacts, Bernhard in May, 1954, was a key figure in organising a meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands for the business elite and intellectuals of the Western World to discuss the economic problems in the face of what they characterized as the growing threat from Communism. This first meeting was successful, and it became an annual gathering known as the Bilderberg Group. The idea for the European Union, first proposed by Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950, was encouraged at Bilderberg.
Prince Bernhard was a very outspoken person who often flouted protocol by remarking upon subjects about which he felt deeply. Almost until his last day he called for more recognition for the Polish veterans of the Second World War who had figured greatly in the liberation of the Netherlands, but only after his death did the Dutch government decide to publicly recognize the important role of the Polish army in the liberation: on 31 May 2006, at the Binnenhof in The Hague, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix conferred the Order of William, the highest Dutch military decoration, on the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade.
In the middle of the 1950s, Prince Bernhard was involved in what some considered a personal vendetta against Greet Hofmans, a faith healer and hand layer. For nine years she was a friend and adviser of Queen Juliana, often residing at Palace Soestdijk. Originally, Hofmans was introduced to Queen Juliana on the initiative of Prince Bernhard in 1948 to treat the eye sickness of Princess Marijke Christina. This illness arose because Juliana was infected with rubella during pregnancy. Hofmans developed a great influence on the Queen, encouraging pacifist ideas. In the period of the Cold War this caused a crisis in the royal household. Reputedly it reached the point where it threatened the marriage of Juliana and Bernhard.
Outside the Netherlands, a great deal was written about the Hofmans affair. On 13 June 1956, an article appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel with the title Zwischen Königin und Rasputin—“between the queen and her Rasputin”, which painted a less-than-flattering picture of Hofmans. Later, Bernhard admitted that he personally provided the information for the article. It is thought that by doing this he hoped to have Hofmans removed from the court. The Prime Minister, Willem Drees, had to act and appointed a committee of "three wise men" (elder statesmen) to advise the royal couple. The Prince got what he wanted; Hofmans was banished, and various friends and supporters of the Queen in the Royal Household had to give up their office.
In 2008 the report of the "three wise men" has been made public and is part of the book "Juliana & Bernhard" by historian Fasseur, who was also granted access to the private royal archive by the Queen. Bernhard was reprimanded for leaking confidential information to the international press, but although both Juliana and the Queen Mother Wilhelmina mention their fear of a "German putsch" (i.e. Juliana's abdication followed by Bernhard's rule on behalf of their adolescent oldest daughter and successor to the throne) Juliana was forced to break all relations with Hofmans.
The book does somewhat rehabilitate Bernhard as it clearly shows the prince only resorted to bringing in the international press after much and often dramatic and desperate pleading with his wife to distance herself from the Hofmans clan. Fasseur said: "Bernard was obviously a free spirited chap, who independently went about his business. But he was still very much a family man. I got the feeling he was the only one that was seeing things were getting completely out of hand and tried to salvage the situation as much as he could."[7]
The royal family did not edit the book, nor did they have a preview before its printing. But after reading it they endorsed its accounts of the developments that led to Hofmans’ dismissal.
Scandal rocked the Royal Family in 1976 when it was revealed that Prince Bernhard had accepted a US$1.1 million bribe from U.S. aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Corporation to influence the Dutch government's purchase of fighter aircraft. At the time he had served on more than 300 corporate boards and committees worldwide and had been praised in the Netherlands for his efforts to promote the economic well-being of the country. Prime Minister of the Netherlands Joop den Uyl ordered an inquiry into the Lockheed affair, while Prince Bernhard refused to answer reporters' questions, stating: "I am above such things".[8]
The Dutch and international press headlined the stories for months, providing proof of Prince Bernhard's Reiter SS membership and details of his numerous extramarital affairs, including the purchase of a luxurious Paris apartment for his mistress Hélène Grinda, with whom he had an illegitimate daughter, Alexia. (Bernhard also had a second illegitimate daughter, Alicia, in the USA.)
On 26 August 1976, a toned-down, but nonetheless devastating, report on Prince Bernhard's activities was released to a shocked Dutch public. The Prince's own letter of 1974, to Lockheed Corporation, demanding "commissions" be paid to him on Dutch government aircraft purchases was very damaging evidence of improper conduct by the inspector-general of the Dutch armed forces. Criminal charges were not pressed by the government out of respect for Queen Juliana, whose later abdication was tacitly understood to be directly related to her husband's conduct.
Prince Bernhard resigned as inspector-general of the Dutch armed forces. This meant that he was not allowed to wear a uniform in public, but it did not stop him from attending the 1979 funeral of Lord Mountbatten in London in full colours.
Prime Minister Joop den Uyl made a statement in parliament and told the delegates that the Prince would also resign from his various high-profile positions in businesses, charities, and other institutions. The Dutch states-general voted against criminal prosecution. Prince Bernhard turned over the presidency of the international World Wildlife Fund to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The Dutch Royal family worked hard to rehabilitate the Prince's name, though other scandals were to be revealed in later years.
In 1988, Prince Bernhard and Princess Juliana sold two paintings from their personal collection to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. The paintings sold for GBP700,000, which was deposited in a Swiss WWF bank account. In 1989, however, Charles de Haes, director-general of the WWF, transferred GBP500,000 back to Bernhard, for what De Haes called a private project. In 1991, newspapers reported what this private project was: Prince Bernhard had hired KAS International, owned by SAS founder David Stirling, to use mercenaries—mostly British—to fight poachers in nature reserves.[9] The paramilitary group infiltrated organisations profiting from illegal trade in ivory in order to arrest them.
This Project Lock seemed to have backfired enormously, however. Bernhard’s private army had not only infiltrated in the illegal trade, they were also participating in it. To make things worse, Irish reporter Kevin Dowling discovered that the South African army was also involved in the trade, hinting at connections between the Bernhard’s army and the WWF and the struggle for maintaining apartheid. Moreover, he claimed members of the South African-run counterinsurgency unit Koevoet (Afrikaans and Dutch for "crowbar") had been trained under Project Lock.
In 1995, Nelson Mandela called upon the Kumleben Commission to investigate, among other things, the role of the WWF in apartheid South Africa. In the report that followed, it was suggested that mercenaries from Project Lock had planned assassinations of ANC members and that mercenaries had been running training camps in the wildlife reserves, training fighters from the anti-communist groups UNITA and Renamo. Although Prince Bernhard was never accused of any crime in its context, the Project Lock scandal dealt another damaging blow to the Prince's name.
Yet more controversy came on 30 October 2002, when he paid the fines of two Albert Heijn supermarket staff members, who were convicted of assaulting a shoplifter after they detained him.
In an interview published after his death, on 14 December 2004, Prince Bernhard admitted that he had accepted more than one million dollars (US) in bribes from Lockheed. He acknowledged it was a mistake and claimed that all of the money went to the WWF. He said: "I have accepted that the word Lockheed will be carved on my tombstone."[10] He also admitted to having fathered two illegitimate daughters in the years following his marriage.[11]
In February 2008, Joop den Uyl's biography claimed that the official report investigating the Lockheed bribe scandal also presented proof that the Prince had accepted money from yet another airplane maker: Northrop. The former Prime Minister claimed he had not made the information public to protect the Dutch monarchy.[12]
The 2009 publication HRH: High Stakes at the Court of His Royal Highness by historian Harry Veenendaal and journalist Jort Kelder alleges that the prince in 1950 attempted to oust the young government of the newly founded Republic of Indonesia and place himself at the head of the Islands as viceroy similar to Lord Mountbatten's role in British India. This was particularly contentious as in 1949 the Netherlands had already officially recognised its former colony as an independent nation.[13]
Prince Bernhard is father of six children, four of them with Queen Juliana. The eldest daughter is the current Queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix (1938). His other daughters with Juliana are Irene (1939), Margriet (1943) and Christina (1947).
He had two illegitimate daughters. The first is Alicia von Bielefeld (born June 1954), whose mother has not been identified. A landscape architect, she lives in the United States. Prince Bernhard's sixth daughter, Alexia Grinda (a.k.a. Alexia Lejeune or Alexia Grinda-Lejeune, born in Paris in November 1967), is his child by the French socialite and fashion model Hélène Grinda.[14] Although rumours about these two children had already spread, it was made official after his death.
In 1994, the Netherlands feared for his death when he had a colon tumor removed and suffered severe complications due to respiratory distress. In December, his daughter Queen Beatrix rushed to the hospital straight after landing from a trip to Africa. But by Christmas the prospect of death had faded and spring the next year he recovered enough to go home. His health problems continued in 1998 when he had a prostate swelling and in 1999 when he suffered difficulties breathing and talking. He did, however, attend the wedding of his grandson, right after having prostate surgery. In 2000, the country feared for his life again when he suffered neurological complications and continued breathing problems. Two days after intensive medical (and media) attention the Royal Press Office issued a statement the Prince was reading newspapers again.
Over the following years Bernhard retained his fighting spirit and continued to shine at the military parades on the national liberation day celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Only when his wife Juliana died in March 2004 the terribly upset Prince became exceedingly fragile. Up to the last moment it remained uncertain if he could attend the Royal funeral, which he eventually managed to attend. He said his final farewells to his war comrades on liberation day in May and in November that same year he was diagnosed with untreatable cancer.[15]
Prince Bernhard died of cancer at the age of 93 in an Utrecht hospital (the Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht - University of Utrecht Medical Centre) on 1 December 2004; until his death he suffered from malignant lung and intestinal tumors. On 11 December 2004, he was interred in a lavish state funeral at the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft. Bernhard's funeral was different from those of Prince Claus and Queen Juliana in that Bernhard's coffin was transported on the undercarriage of a cannon instead of in the traditional carriage used when the coffins of Prince Claus and Queen Juliana were transported to Delft. Together with the playing of many military marches and the forming of guards of honour by Second World War veterans this gave the funeral procession a military character as the late Prince, a Second World War veteran, had wished. As a final tribute to his former military role in the Royal Netherlands Air Force, three modern F-16 jet fighters and a World War II Spitfire plane performed a low fly-by during the funeral in a classic missing man formation.
In the years after Bernhard died his life story still fascinates many and is the inspiration for literature, theatre, television and even comic books.[16] In 2010 fact and fiction of the life of Bernhard is portrayed in a Dutch television series.[17] In the series it is insinuated that writer Ian Fleming, who personally knew Bernhard from their war efforts in London, based some features of his fictional character James Bond on Bernhard, who was for instance known to enjoy a vodka martini shaken and not stirred. Next to his reputation as a womanizer Prince Bernhard was also well known for his love for fast planes, fast cars and speeding. Among the villain's henchmen in the novel and film "Thunderball" one of them is named Count Lippe. He only knew of one person who was having a great time during World War II, and that it was Prince Bernhard.[18]
In a biographical dissertation by Dutch journalist and historian Annejet van der Zijl published in March 2010, Bernhard was called a "a failure" in the history of the Dutch royal family and a "creature of his own myths". With his lifestyle and the "myths" that he created around his own person would have done "permanent damage to the integrity of the monarchy".[19]
On 15 September 1964, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Prince Bernhard to the honorary rank of Air Marshal in the Royal Air Force.[21]
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Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld
Born: 29 June 1911 Died: 1 December 2004 |
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| Dutch royalty | ||
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| Vacant
Title last held by
Hendrik of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |
Prince consort of the Netherlands 6 September 1948 – 30 April 1980 |
Succeeded by Claus van Amsberg |
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