Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld

Biography

The date of his birth is not entirely clear: the birth entry made in Jena gives 28 June 1911, but all his life he celebrated on 29 June, and that date appears in his naturalisation and marriage records. Relatives explained the discrepancy as a registration error.

His father, Prince Bernhard of Lippe, was a younger brother of the last reigning prince of Lippe. His parents’ marriage was considered morganatic, which is why the boy was born with the title of Count of Biesterfeld. In February 1916 Prince Leopold IV raised him, his brother Aschwin and their mother to princely rank, and from then on he bore the name Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld. His childhood was spent on the family estate of Reckenwalde in the province of Posen. Until the age of twelve he was taught at home, then he boarded at a school in Züllichau and at a Berlin gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1929. He studied law in Lausanne, Munich and Berlin, qualified as a law referendar in 1935, and joined the Paris office of the chemical concern IG Farben, where he soon became secretary to the board.

From 1 May 1933 he was listed as a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), and he belonged to the Sturmabteilung (SA), the party’s paramilitary Brownshirts, and to the mounted unit of the SS. All his life he denied being a party member. His original party card was found in the royal house archive, as announced in 2023; he admitted membership of the SA and SS but played it down. The explanation that university examinations could not be passed without it has not been confirmed by historians.

In the winter of 1936, at the Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, he met Princess Juliana. The engagement was announced on 8 September 1936, in November he received Dutch citizenship, and on 7 January 1937 the wedding took place in The Hague. Before leaving for the Netherlands he paid a brief visit to Hitler. The couple had four daughters: Beatrix (1938), Irene (1939), Margriet (1943) and Christina (1947).

In May 1940, when Germany attacked the Netherlands, he is said to have fired a machine gun at German aircraft. Juliana left for Canada with the children, while he found himself in London at the side of Queen Wilhelmina. The British services at first distrusted a man of German origin, and he gained access to intelligence information only on the recommendation of King George VI. On 25 June 1940 he spoke on the BBC and called Hitler a German tyrant. In the autumn of 1940 he trained as a pilot at Hatfield. Accounts of his career as a combat pilot are exaggerated: one flight over enemy territory is documented, on 21 June 1944. In September 1944 Wilhelmina put him at the head of the Interior Forces, which brought together the Resistance units. On 5 May 1945 he was present at Wageningen at the negotiations for the surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands and, according to tradition, refused on principle to speak German.

After the war he was inspector general of the Dutch armed forces, sat on the supervisory boards of Fokker and KLM, and in 1954 became chairman of the first Bilderberg conference. He loved cars and aeroplanes and flew into old age. In 1961 he took part in founding the World Wildlife Fund and was its president until 1976; in 1970 he established the 1001 Club, which collected contributions for the fund.

What happened in 1976 is known from the commission’s report: the prince had asked the American company Lockheed for commissions on aircraft purchases for the Dutch army. No criminal case was brought. He left his post as inspector general, gave up wearing a uniform and resigned from many positions, including those at the WWF. Shortly before his death he admitted that he had accepted more than a million dollars, and said that the word “Lockheed” would be carved on his tombstone. A separate story concerns the 1980s: money raised from the sale of paintings and given to the fund was returned to him, and it paid for mostly British mercenaries to fight poachers in Africa. The Kumleben Commission in South Africa later discussed this operation, but no charges were brought against the prince himself. I do not know whether his conservation work can be considered independent of these episodes; the documents here are contradictory.

Juliana died in March 2004, and he attended her funeral. In the autumn he was taken into hospital, and in mid-November a serious illness was announced. Prince Bernhard died on 1 December 2004 at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. He was buried on 11 December in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft; his coffin was carried on a gun carriage, and three F-16 fighters and a Spitfire flew over the church.