Royal family returns Prince Bernhard’s Nazi membership card to Germany

Royal family returns Prince Bernhard’s Nazi membership card to Germany | Royalty

ROYALTYThe royal family has transferred Prince Bernhard’s much-discussed NSDAP membership card to Germany. The national archives in Koblenz announced this. The discovery of the map in the prince’s private archive caused a lot of fuss in October last year. Since then it has been conclusively established that he was a member of Hitler’s Nazi party. For example, he accepted bribes, had children out of wedlock and, if necessary, leaked incriminating information about his wife, the Queen, to journalists.

There had been strong suspicions for some time that Prince Bernhard had been a member of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party. But the prince himself always categorically denied this, even though historians Gerard Aalders and Coen Hilbrink found a copy of his membership card and correspondence about the cancellation in 1936 in the United States in 1996. Until last October, convincing evidence was found. His private archive contained his original NSDAP membership card.

Writer Flip Maarschalkerweerd revealed the discovery in his book ‘The Behind’. After the death of Prince Bernhard in 2004, the writer and former director of the Royal House Archives had to inventory the prince’s private archives. The private archive contained Bernhard’s file card from the central NSDAP membership file as well as other documents belonging to the prince, such as correspondence and conversation notes. The documents had been handed over to Bernhard in 1949 by American military general Lucius D. Clay. Since then they have been in the possession of the Royal House Archives. “Dear Prince Bernhard,” Clay wrote, “I kept this in my safe for several years. As I was about to destroy it, it occurred to me that you have earned the right to destroy this yourself.”

The discovery led to the Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund removing his name and discussions in many municipalities about streets, squares and associations that bear his name.

Original context

Claudia Hörster, director of the Royal Collections, transferred the documents to the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives) in Koblenz, which also manages the Nazi Party archives. This also includes documents about the termination of the prince’s membership. “It mainly concerns correspondence between German party members,” Hörster previously told ‘NRC’.

It also contains a report of a conversation between the prince and an employee of the German Emigrant Center in Amsterdam. The reason for that conversation is tensions in German-Dutch relations that threaten to complicate the arrival of German guests for the wedding between Bernhard and Juliana in 1937.

Hörster, has transferred these documents to the German Archives so that the documents “can be returned to their original context and made generally accessible,” the Bundesarchiv said in a press release. The membership card will be returned to the central membership administration of the NSDAP in the archives. This includes approximately 12.7 million cards.

Great recognition

“It deserves great recognition that the Royal House Archives in The Hague has approached the Federal Archives and offered to return the documents to their original context. This closes a significant gap in tradition,” said chairman Michael Hollmann.

The NSDAP membership file has been in the Bundesarchiv since 1994. Previously it was part of the Berlin Document Center (BDC), which is under American administration. The file was used, among other things, in preparation for the trials of war criminals in Nuremberg.

Only since its transfer to the Bundesarchiv has the file been available for scientific research or the public. In addition to the central membership file, the archive also contains party correspondence and personnel data of members of the SS (Schutzstaffel) and SA (Sturmabteilung).