Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (later Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; 29 June 1911 – 1 December 2004) was Prince of the Netherlands from 6 September 1948 to 30 April 1980 as the husband of Queen Juliana. They had four daughters together, including Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Bernhard belonged to the German princely House of Lippe-Biesterfeld and was a nephew of the last sovereign prince of Lippe, Leopold IV. From birth he held the title Count of Biesterfeld; his uncle raised him to princely rank with the style of Serene Highness in 1916. He studied law and worked as an executive secretary at the Paris office of IG Farben. In 1937 he married Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, and was immediately given the title Prince of the Netherlands with the style of Royal Highness. Upon his wife's accession to the throne in 1948, he became prince consort.
Bernhard was an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) as well as the brown shirts or Sturmabteilung (SA), and served as an officer in the Schutzstaffel (SS). He switched his political allegiance to the Allies after the invasion of the Netherlands. Until his death, Bernhard denied being a NSDAP member or holding a NSDAP membership card. He was respected for his performance as a combat pilot and his activities as a liaison officer and personal aide to his mother-in-law, Queen Wilhelmina, during the conflict, and for his work during post-war reconstruction. During the war, he was part of the London-based Allied war planning council, and saw limited active combat service as honorary wing commander in Royal Air Force (RAF), flying both fighter and bomber planes. He was also an honorary general officer in the Dutch army and was an observer in negotiating the terms of surrender of Nazi forces in the Netherlands. Officially for proven bravery, leadership and loyalty during his wartime efforts, he was appointed a Commander of the Military William Order, the Netherlands' oldest and highest honour. After the war he was 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. He became entangled in the so-called Lockheed bribery scandal in 1976 for having secretly promoted the sale of their airplanes and of Northrop's for money, and was degraded from all his military functions with a lifelong ban on wearing any military uniform.
Bernhard helped found the World Wildlife Fund (WWF, later renamed World Wide Fund for Nature), becoming its first president in 1961. In 1970, along with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and other associates, he established the WWF's financial endowment "The 1001: A Nature Trust". In 1954, he was a co-founder of the international Bilderberg Group, which has met annually since then to discuss corporate globalisation and other issues concerning Europe and North America. He was forced to step down from both groups after being involved in the Lockheed bribery scandal.
Bernhard was born Bernhard Leopold Friedrich Eberhard Julius Kurt Karl Gottfried Peter, Count of Biesterfeld in Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, German Empire on 29 June 1911, the elder son of Prince Bernhard of Lippe and his wife, Baroness Armgard von Sierstorpff-Cramm, member of one of the oldest Lower Saxon noble families, House of Cramm. He was a grandson of Ernest, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld, who was regent of the Principality of Lippe until 1904, and was also a nephew of the principality's last sovereign, Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe.
Because his parents' marriage did not conform with the marriage laws of the House of Lippe, it was initially deemed morganatic, as Armgard did not belong by birth to any ruling or the former ruling families of Europe, Bernhard was granted only the title of Count of Biesterfeld at birth. He and his brother could succeed to the Lippian throne only if the entire reigning House became extinct. In 1916, his uncle Leopold IV as reigning Prince raised him and his mother to the rank of Prince and Princess of Lippe-Biesterfeld, thereby retroactively according his parents' marriage dynastic status. The suffix Biesterfeld revived the beginning of a new cadet line of the House of Lippe.
After World War I, Bernhard's family lost their German Principality and the revenue that had accompanied it, but the family was still reasonably well-off. Bernhard spent his early years at Reckenwalde palace (Wojnowo, Poland), the family's new estate in East Brandenburg, thirty kilometres east of the River Oder. He was taught privately and received his early education at home. When he was twelve, he was sent to board at the Gymnasium in Züllichau (Sulechów). Several years later he was sent 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 inspired 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, in fall 1929 until the spring of 1930, then in Berlin, then in Munich the following year in the fall of 1931, and then again in Berlin. In Munich Bernhard enrolled himself on 24 October 1930. Van der Zijl also stresses the notoriety of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München as extreme-right including sending away Albert Einstein as a lecturer in the twenties and the early ban of all Jewish societies. She characterizes of the city of Munich as the birthplace of the NSDAP.
Back in Berlin at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in October 1931 after a serious illness, he could also indulge in his taste for fast cars, horse riding, and big-game hunting safaris. He was nearly killed in a boating accident and in an aeroplane crash. (He later suffered a broken neck and crushed ribs in a 160 km/h (100 mph) car crash after his marriage to princess Juliana in 1938). Bernhard was an active member of the Motor-SA and of the Deutsche Studentenschaft, where he inscribed himself on 27 April 1933.
While at university in Berlin for the year 1933, Bernhard joined the Nazi Party, exactly dated on his membership card as 1 May 1933. He also enrolled in the Sturmabteilung (SA), stating to his biographer Sefton Delmer that such a membership was necessary to register for exams – but Van der Zijl points out, that there were no official exams at this university until 1935.
Bernhard left Berlin in December 1934 when he graduated and went to work for IG Farben. The Prince later denied that he had belonged to SA, to the Reiter-SS (SS Cavalry Corps), and to the paramilitary National-sozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps (NSKK), but these are well-documented memberships. According to journalist Philip Dröge, Bernhard was also a member of Nazi youth movement Sturm. While he was not a fierce champion of democracy, the Prince was never known to hold any radical political views or express any racist sentiments, although he admitted that he briefly had sympathised with Adolf Hitler's regime. van der Zijl clearly demonstrates, that Bernhard again and again fabulates on his memberships and other activities, to enhance his postwar stance that he never willingly would have joined any Nazi-organization. In October 2023, Bernhard's original NSDAP membership card was discovered in his old residence in Germany.
The Prince eventually went to work for the German chemical giant IG Farben in the early-to-mid 1930s, then the world's fourth-largest company. In 1932, it had already sponsored Hitler's election campaigns. (It survives today as BASF, AGFA, and Bayer). He joined the statistics department of IG Farben's N.W.7 wing, the company's main information gathering and management centre headquartered in Berlin and with offices worldwide (known as VOWI) that evolved into the economic intelligence arm of the Wehrmacht. He was lodged with Count Paul von Kotzebue (1884–1966), an exiled Russian nobleman of German descent, and his wife Allene Tew, who was born in the United States. After training, Bernhard became a secretary in 1935 to the board of directors at IG Farben's Paris office.