Robert Bernardis

Robert Bernardis (born August 7, 1908 in Innsbruck , † August 8, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was an Austrian resistance fighter and lieutenant colonel in the general staff of the German Wehrmacht . He was involved in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 on Adolf Hitler and the subsequent attempted coup by telephoning Operation Valkyrie in the parts of Wehrkreis III outside the urban area of ​​Berlin .

Life

Robert Bernardis, whom the historian Karl Glaubauf called “Austria's Stauffenberg”, was born in Innsbruck and baptized as a Protestant. His father Nikolaus Bernardis came from Rovigno in Istria, had Italian nationality and was a military builder who, among other things, built the Breitensee command building in Vienna . His mother Antonia, née Kropik, came from a Sudeten German family, but was born in Horn in Lower Austria. His father was transferred to Linz soon after , and the family moved there as a result. After attending elementary and military secondary school in Linz and Enns, he graduated from what was then the Federal Educational Institute in Wiener Neustadt with his brother Friedrich in 1925 .

He then completed the two-year trade school in Mödling , which he left as a trained construction technician . During this time he joined the Wiking zu Mödling student fraternity in 1922 . Since Bernardis did not find a job that matched his training, he first had to earn his living as a bricklayer and foreman.

Military career

In 1928, because of the poor situation on the job market, he finally went "into the military, as many others did - less out of great enthusiasm than out of necessity," as he recorded in his handwritten curriculum vitae, which is now kept in the Austrian State Archives.

In accordance with his civilian training, he chose the pioneer troops as the weapon type at the officers' academy in Enns . As a high school graduate , he was able to study there and did not have to complete the officers' school beforehand.

In 1932, when he was retired, he married the Linz geography and sports student Hermine Feichtinger (born December 6, 1909 in Linz ; † November 3, 2009 there ). His first deployment of the troops led him to the Linz Pioneer Battalion 4 . There he applied in 1936 for admission to the "Higher Officer Courses" and was assigned to the "War Technology Course". This was a special general staff training course for pioneer officers, which at that time only existed in the Austrian armed forces . This training also contributed significantly to his later close friendship with Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , as he absolutely needed a trained pioneer officer for the planned assassination attempt on Hitler. As a cavalryman and later tank officer, Stauffenberg himself had little experience in dealing with explosives.

A close relationship with National Socialism that Robert Bernardis is said to have is controversial. A “Karl Bernardis” is entered in the list of members of the Austrian “National Socialist Soldiers' Ring”. Whether he was confused with his comrade in Linz, Lieutenant Karl Pridun, whether he was registered under a false name, or whether “Karl Bernardis” was his brother Friedrich, who was also an officer, cannot be determined with certainty.

World War II and Resistance

After the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the officer , who had meanwhile become the third General Staff Officer (Ic) of the 51st  Army Corps (LI.) , Witnessed mass shootings and cannibalism in a camp near Zhitomir , about 200 kilometers west of Kiev . When Bernardis left the camp, he vomited and did not speak any more that day.

Even when Kharkov was captured at the end of October 1941, Bernardis had to witness hundreds of residents, mostly Jews, being publicly hanged in the streets. It was determined to "ruthlessly pacify the city through deterrent measures and reprisals."

At the beginning of 1942 Bernardis fell seriously ill and was treated in March 1942 first in a field hospital and then in a Berlin hospital for duodenal ulcers .

After his recovery, Bernardis rose from June 1942 as a lieutenant colonel in the general staff to group leader "personnel" in the general army office in Berlin's Bendler block .

Participation in the Valkyrie plan

When Stauffenberg became Chief of Staff of the Replacement Army in September 1943, daily business contact between him and Bernardis was mandatory. It is not possible to prove who of the two revealed himself to the other first in the question of resistance. What is certain, however, is that a consensus on the removal of the Nazi regime was quickly reached. Bernardis now took an active part in the circle of conspirators, as he began, as the letters to his wife show, to adapt the existing orders for Operation Valkyrie even more specifically for an uprising of the Wehrmacht against Hitler in all armed forces. As Carl Szokoll announced , Bernardis traveled regularly to Vienna from February 1944 . First he visited the chief of staff in military district XVII (Vienna), his personal friend, the knight's cross bearer Heinrich Kodré . He then informed Captain Carl Szokoll about the status of preparations for the planned overthrow of the Nazi regime.

Kodré triggered Valkyrie on July 20, initially bypassing the commanding general , Hans-Karl Freiherr von Esebeck , and only later informing him of the measures taken. Esebeck approved this, although he recognized that the telex was signed by the long-retired Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and was therefore invalid. It was only after Bernardis had spoken to Kodré for hours that he went to Szokoll to give him the necessary orders to organize Operation Valkyrie in the Vienna military district. So Szokoll was able to organize the action, but was not authorized to initiate it. For this the order of the military district command was absolutely necessary. As Stauffenberg's liaison between Vienna and Berlin, Bernardis took a considerable risk, as the numerous business trips required for this could hardly be explained plausibly when the Gestapo checked it. After all, Bernardis was the group leader “Personnel” and had to organize supplies for the fronts. Personal presence in Vienna was not necessary.

On July 20, 1944 it was not possible for General Erich Fellgiebel to inform the conspirators in Berlin exactly about the events. After the attack, only the telephone lines of the SS were open, which enabled Hitler to speak to Major Otto Ernst Remer .

The rumor of a successful assassination attempt quickly burst and the fate of Operation Valkyrie sealed, because the regime's countermeasures began faster than the unreliably informed conspirators in Berlin could act. When the assassination attempt on Hitler failed and the overthrow of the Nazi system threatened to fail in the late afternoon of July 20, 1944, Bernardis picked up the phone and alerted the combat units in the parts of Wehrkreis III located outside the urban area of ​​Berlin.

"After 4 p.m. Lieutenant Colonel Bernardis began to alert the troops outside Berlin: The Krampnitz and Wünsdorf armored troop schools, the Groß-Glienicke armored courses, the Döberitz infantry school, the Fahnenjunkerschule and the Potsdam NCO school."

With this he revealed himself to be a member of the conspiracy. The units alerted by him followed his orders immediately and waived the required telephone inquiries and confirmation by the military district command, because they too had already been initiated into the real purpose of the measures by Bernardis. However, he could only alert the combat units of the military district stationed outside Berlin, since the urban area of ​​Berlin formed its own command area and was subordinate to Lieutenant General Paul von Hase . In addition, the countermeasures of the guard battalion “Greater Germany” under the command of Remer came into effect relatively quickly in the city itself and the conspirators therefore had to reinforce themselves from outside. Originally, the Central Cavalry Regiment under the command of Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager was intended for this purpose. This was to be moved from the Brest-Litowsk area to Berlin using transport machines. Heavy fighting in the city had to be expected due to the strong SS presence. As a result of the rapid countermeasures of the system, however, transfers to the Berlin area in the late afternoon of July 20, 1944 were no longer possible because the two Berlin airfields could no longer be secured. “Back to the old holes” - this is the agreed code word transmitted by radio for the failure of the action - therefore prompted Boeselager to move back to his old positions as quickly as possible 200 kilometers east in order to remain undetected, which was also successful.

The end

After the failure of the coup attempt, Bernardis' fate was sealed: on August 8, 1944, he was sentenced to death in Berlin and hanged the same evening in Plötzensee prison , making sure that the convicts died by slowly suffocating. According to Hitler, the conspirators should die as painfully as possible and like in a slaughterhouse, not by shooting.

His wife Hermine Bernardis and her mother-in-law were taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a clan prisoner on August 27, 1944 , and released on October 6, 1944.

The two children of Robert Bernardis were interned in Bad Sachsa like those of the other conspirators .

Commemoration

Robert Bernardis received posthumous recognition in Austria late. In 1985 a memorial plaque was erected in the Jakob Kern House of the Vienna Military Parish. In 1994, General Hubertus Trauttenberg, together with the Mayor of Linz , Franz Dobusch, pushed through a street name for Bernardis in Linz. Since 1985 there has been a "Bernardis Street" in Hanover.

After that, it would take another ten years before the Ministry of Defense reacted accordingly and a memorial was unveiled in his honor on October 11, 2004 in the Army NCOs' Academy in Enns. From the address given by Federal President Heinz Fischer : "With this monument, the Republic of Austria also honors the resistance against criminal National Socialism in principle and beyond a single person."

On August 7, 2008, the Austrian Armed Forces commemorated the 100th birthday of Robert Bernardis in the presence of his widow Hermine; the eulogy was given by the Protestant military pastor Karl-Reinhart Trauner.

On October 31, 2008, Bernardis was honored at the Reformation reception of the Protestant Church in Austria, to which he had belonged, in the presence of the Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer . From the speech by Federal President Fischer: “The Nazi dictatorship under Adolf Hitler was a criminal regime built on an inhuman ideology, which in an unmistakable way had so much guilt upon itself and the death of so many innocent people that resistance against this regime was honorable - also and precisely because this resistance was ruthlessly threatened with death and in many cases actually had to be paid for with life. [...] That is why resistance fighters like Robert Bernardis are rightly honored. "

The reformed state superintendent Thomas Hennefeld said that the memory of Bernardis was “a stimulus and encouragement for the Evangelical Churches to take more secure steps into the future, to pay attention to the voice of our conscience and to act consequently”.

The Evangelical Church of AB and HB published a commemorative publication designed by Karl Glaubauf and Karl-Reinhart Trauner with the title Robert Bernardis (1908–1944) - Austria's Stauffenberg on the 100th anniversary of the birth . State Superintendent Thomas Hennefeld explained that the book is to be understood as a contribution of the Evangelical Churches in Austria to the commemorative year 2008. The Evangelical Churches have “to deal with a lot” with regard to their history under National Socialism.

At the ceremony for 90 years of Upper Austria on November 2, 2008, Federal President Fischer paid tribute to the “heroism of men and women who at that time - often sacrificing their lives - resisted an inhuman regime and contributed to the re-establishment of a free, independent democratic republic of Austria. Franz Jägerstätter and Robert Bernardis both lived in Upper Austria. They are personalities in the history of this country and we can be proud of them. "

On the occasion of his 110th birthday, a documentary about People & Powers was broadcast on ORF . At the same time, the granddaughter was given a decree on rehabilitation.

At the initiative of Defense Minister Thomas Starlinger , the Rossauer Kaserne was renamed Rossauer Kaserne Bernardis-Schmid , after Robert Bernardis and Anton Schmid , at the beginning of 2020 .

See also

• Personalities of July 20, 1944

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 , pp. 78-80.
• Kurt Finker : Stauffenberg and July 20th . Union-Verlag VOB, Berlin 1967. (numerous later editions)
• Peter Steinbach / Johannes Tuchel : Lexicon of Resistance 1933-1945. Publishing house CHBeck . Munich. 1994. p. 24 f.
• Karl Glaubauf: Robert Bernardis - Austria's Stauffenberg , Vienna 1994.
• Karl Glaubauf, Karl-Reinhart Trauner: Robert Bernardis - Austria's Stauffenberg to commemorate his 100th birthday. Evangelical Press Association 2008, ISBN 978-3-85073-314-4 .
• The same: Robert Bernardis - Austria's Stauffenberg , e-book of the Austria Forum. Graz 2010.
• Josef Toch: Bernardis, Robert , in: New Austrian Biography. Volume 22. Amalthea, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-85002-253-6 .
• Karl-Reinhart Trauner: With Stauffenberg against Hitler. Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Robert Bernardis (1908-1944) . Tillinger-Verlag, Szentendre 2008, ISBN 978-963-06-4558-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Bernardis in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Glaubauf : Entry on Robert Bernardis in the Austria Forum
• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laudation at the ceremony on the occasion of his 100th birthday (PDF; 32 kB) on August 7, 2008 in the Towarek barracks in Enns, accessed on November 1, 2010.
2. ↑ Karl Glaubauf , Robert Bernardis: Austria's Stauffenberg, self-published 1994, 88 pages, photo p. 53 (shows Bernardis in the color of his connection)
3. ↑ Notes of his driver Otto Mühl.
4. ^ Karl-Reinhart Trauner: With Stauffenberg against Hitler, Robert Bernardis. (P. 45)
5. ↑ Kurt Finker: Stauffenberg and July 20, 1944 (p. 233)
6. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär : Stauffenberg. July 20, 1944. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-10-086003-9 , p. 156.
7. ↑ Statement by Hermione Bernardis.
8. ↑ Memorial plaque for Austrian General Staff officers with Robert Bernardis. geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at, accessed on October 16, 2018 . 
9. ^ Bernardisstrasse
10. ↑ Austria's Armed Forces : “The honor comes late, but not too late!” Monument for resistance fighters Bernardis , October 11, 2004 (with photos of the memorial)
11. ^ Hofburg: Speech by Federal President Dr. Heinz Fischer on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Robert Bernardis, October 11, 2004 (accessed October 30, 2013)
12. ↑ Austrian Federal Army: Robert Bernardis: Commemoration for the 100th birthday
13. ^ Laudation from Karl-Reinhart Trauner at the ceremony on August 7, 2008
14. ^ Speech by BP Fischer: Reformation reception of the Protestant churches (accessed on October 30, 2013)
15. ↑ ^{a b c} epd-Nachrichten: Federal President Fischer: The Republic of Austria and the criminal Nazi system behave towards one another “like fire and water”, October 30, 2008
16. ↑ Evangelical Church Messenger Linz. October 2008. p. 9.
17. ↑ State ceremony “90 years of Upper Austria” in the large house of the State Theater in Linz  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
18. ^ "People & Powers" documentary "Robert Bernardis, a forgotten hero" in the presidential office presented on OTS on September 4, 2018, accessed on September 12, 2018.
19. ^ Gerhard Vogl: New names for Viennese barracks. In: The press . December 26, 2019, accessed January 27, 2020 . 
20. ^ New names for Viennese barracks. In: ORF.at . January 27, 2020, accessed January 27, 2020 . 
21. ^ Vienna: Rossauer barracks and collegiate barracks got new names. In: DerStandard.at . January 27, 2020, accessed January 27, 2020 . 
22. ↑ A barracks for two brave men. In: science. ORF.at . January 29, 2020, accessed January 29, 2020 .