Prince Bernhard (29 June 1911 – 1 December 2004) - consort to Queen Juliana

[Principessa]

https://nos.nl/artikel/24...hap-bernhard-grote-impact

Loosely translated as

NOS News
Thursday, 3:42 PM

King responds to Bernhard's NSDAP membership: 'Great impact'

King Willem-Alexander has responded to the discovery of the NSDAP membership card of his grandfather Prince Bernhard. "I can very well imagine that the news has a major impact, that it evokes many emotions, especially among the Jewish community."

The king says that he is convinced that we must face the past, including the less beautiful aspects. He is referring to the opening of the private archives of the Royal House until September 6, 1948. From next year, everyone will have access to those archives.

"I also have the option of removing things from the archive, but I have decided not to do that. I believe that the entire archive should be available to researchers and historiography as transparently as possible," the king told NOS.

Yesterday it was announced that Prince Bernhard's original membership card of the NSDAP had been found. This proves beyond doubt that he was a member of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party until his marriage in 1937. Historians no longer doubted this, but Bernhard himself continued to deny it until the end of his life.

"I was never a Nazi," Prince Bernhard declared shortly before his death. He could promise that with his hand on the Bible, he said in an interview with de Volkskrant. He would not have paid any contributions and would not have been in possession of a card.

[Principessa]

https://www.nu.nl/konings...ws-over-naziverleden.html


Loosely translated as:

Cultural Fund removes Prince Bernhard from the name after news about the Nazi past

By our entertainment editors
Nov 7, 2023 at 11:12 am
Update: 19 hours ago

The Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund is changing its name. The institution is no longer named after the prince and is now called The Cultural Fund. This decision follows after it was established last month that the prince was a member of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP party.

"With respect and appreciation for the past, the Cultural Fund will continue from today with a name that fits who we are today and with a focus on our content," Cathelijne Broers, director of the Cultural Fund, said in a statement.

"The Cultural Fund is the only fund in the Netherlands to which you can donate and apply for money across the full spectrum of culture and nature. It is therefore important that everyone can recognize themselves in our name."

The Government Information Service does not comment substantively on the name change. However, the service informed NU.nl that it "warmly supports the work of the fund".

Prince Bernhard, who died in 2004, recently became controversial after his NSDAP membership card was found. Until his death, the prince had always denied that he had been a member of Hitler's party.

Historian Flip Maarschalkerweerd, also former director of the Royal House Archives, found the membership card in the prince's private archives. He reported his find in NRC and in his book De Achterblijvers.

King Willem-Alexander responded to the find by saying that "we must face the past, even the less beautiful parts". "I can well imagine that the news has a major impact and evokes many emotions, especially among the Jewish community."

Cultuurfonds was 'very surprised' after revelation
The Cultural Fund said it was very surprised after the revelation. "We are going to list what this means for us as a Cultural Fund," a spokesperson said. The fund has now decided to no longer bear the prince's name.

Every year, the Cultural Fund invests more than 35 million euros in culture and nature for thousands of projects in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the kingdom.

Beatrix, Bernhard's daughter, is currently visiting Curaçao. Her trip is dedicated to the work of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA), of which the princess is patron. The foundation regularly collaborates with the Cultural Fund.

The fund annually awards the Silver Carnation, an award for people who have made a contribution to Dutch culture on a voluntary basis. The name of the prize comes from the carnation that Dutch people wore in their buttonhole in protest against the German occupation. This was done for the first time on Prince Bernhard's birthday.

The prince presented the prize until his death. Then Beatrix did the honors. Another prize from the fund, the Culture Fund Prize, will be presented by Queen Máxima on November 20.
​

[Principessa]

https://nos.nl/artikel/24...-naam-in-het-cultuurfonds





Loosely translated as:


NOS News
•
Yesterday, 11:11
Edited yesterday, 11:45

Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund changes name to the Cultural Fund

The Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund is now called the Cultural Fund. The organization announced this via X.

"With respect and appreciation for the past, the Cultural Fund will continue from today with a name that fits who we are today and with a focus on our content," says director Cathelijne Broers. The fund supports projects in the field of culture and nature conservation in the Netherlands.

Prince Bernhard, who died in 2004, was in the news last month because his original NSDAP membership card was found. He had denied that he had been a member of the Nazi Party until his death. The map was in the private archives of the prince, who died in 2004. Former director of the Royal House Archives Flip Maarschalkerweerd found the map in the archive at Soestdijk Palace, which he inventoried after Bernhard's death.

The Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund immediately said in a response that it was upset about the news. "We are surprised by this announcement and the existence of the document," the fund said in a response. "We are going to list what this news means for us as a cultural fund."

Card never destroyed
The NSDAP was founded in 1920 and had an ideology of extreme nationalism and racism. A few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1936, Bernhard gave up his membership. That year he became engaged to Princess Juliana, the grandmother of King Willem-Alexander. At the engagement party, German guests gave the Hitler salute. Prince Bernhard never destroyed his membership card.

The discovery of the physical map was confirmation of previous evidence that had come to light. In the 1930s, the Americans made a copy of the NSDAP card. In 1996, that copy was found by two Dutch historians. Bernhard then admitted to having been a member of the youth section of the SS, and said that he had to do so in order to pass his exams.

The prince's Nazi past is in stark contrast to his reputation as a resistance hero in the Second World War. From London he was put in charge of the resistance. "It is a very divided life that this man has had," historian Annejet van der Zijl previously told NOS. "After the war there was no way back. He had established himself as a resistance hero."

Fund creation
The fund, previously known as the Prince Bernhard Fund and Carnation Fund, has existed since 1940. When the war was a few months into the war, it was founded in London under the name Spitfire Fund to purchase war equipment. Prince Bernhard was involved from the start. Since the end of the war, the money has been earmarked for culture and nature conservation.

Since 1950, the fund has awarded Silver Carnations annually to volunteers who have committed themselves to culture or nature. Last year the Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund Prize went to the Anne Frank Foundation. This is a lifetime achievement award for someone who has made a special contribution to culture or nature. This prize has been awarded annually by Queen Máxima since 2010.

[CyrilSebastian]

In 1954 Prince Bernhard initiated the annual Bilderberg Conference, a meeting of influential bankers, economists, and politicians.

[Principessa]

In conspiracy thinking world they are rather negative about the Bilderberg meetings and group.

The Bilderberg Meeting (also known as the "Bilderberg Group", "Bilderberg Conference" or "Bilderberg Club") is an annual off-the-record forum established in 1954 to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. The group's agenda, originally to prevent another world war, is now defined as bolstering a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe. Participants include political leaders, experts, captains of industry, finance, academia, numbering between 120 and 150. Attendees are entitled to use information gained at meetings, but not attribute it to a named speaker (known as the Chatham House Rule). The group states that the purpose of this is to encourage candid debate while at the same time maintaining privacy, but critics from a wide range of viewpoints have called it into question, and it has provoked conspiracy theories from both the left and right.

Meetings were chaired by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands until 1975. The current Chairman is French businessman Henri de Castries. Since 1954, the meeting has taken place every year except in 1976, when it was cancelled due to the Lockheed bribery scandals involving Prince Bernhard, and in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lisbon hosted the 69th meeting in 2023

The first conference was held at the Bilderberg Hotel (Hotel de Bilderberg) in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. The hotel gave its name both to the group and to the "Bilderbergers" who participate in its activities. The hotel is situated in a quiet location, approximately 7 km west of the city of Arnhem. It is owned and operated by the Bilderberg hotel chain, which runs 12 hotels and an event location in the Netherlands and one hotel in Germany. At the time of the 1954 conference, it was a medium-sized family-run hotel.

The conference was initiated by several people, including Polish politician-in-exile Józef Retinger who, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism—better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues

Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who agreed to promote the idea, together with former Belgian prime minister Paul van Zeeland, and the then head of Unilever, Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, the then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent "conservative" and "liberal" points of view.Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first conference, along with 11 Americans

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first U.S. conference was held on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation also supplied funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences

The participants are between 120 and 150 people, including political leaders, experts from industry, finance, academia and the media. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields. Historically, attendee lists have been weighted toward bankers, politicians, directors of large businesses and board members from large publicly traded corporations, including Wallenberg-owned conglomerate holding company Investor AB and other Wallenberg-owned multinationals such as Ericsson and ABB, IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler. Heads of state, including former King Juan Carlos I of Spain and former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings. A source connected to the group told The Daily Telegraph in 2013 that other individuals, whose names are not publicly issued, sometimes turn up "just for the day" at the group's meetings