Early Life
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. 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, and later a member of the Reiter SS (SS Cavelry Corps) 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.
Read more about this topic: Prince Bernhard Of Lippe-Biesterfeld
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