Translation from Benelux Royals Messageboard:
-------------------------------
I consider it as my duty
On November 29th 1937 I ended up in the Amsterdam Citizen Hospital, severely wounded after a traffic accident. When my mother in law [Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands] visited me in the hospital, I told her that I wanted to sue the person who was responsible for the accident. "We don't prosecute an action", was her even firm as sufficient reaction.
Now, 66 years later, such a reaction will be less obvious. After all, in more recent time members of the Royal House have prosecuted actions, mainly in cases with a private character, and with the administrative responsibles knowledgeable about it. This with the purpose to draw lines to the aspect of what is well tolerable and what is not.
Looking back I find it regrettable that it was not possible to do the same in earlier days. In this respect I mainly think about the so-called biography from Klinkenberg, published in 1979, used as a source by many publicists under the excuse that I have never contested the book. In that time I was advisid not to prosecute actions. After all: not to react at all on stories with an incorrect drift was seen as a wise policy for the Prime Ministers of the time.
Also now when there is more clearance with regard of the ministerial responsibility, I am yet as always recitent about a course to the Judge, in spite of the fact that I am still the target of many, often rabble and unfounded imputations in publications and in the media. High trees catch much wind. Moreover I have learned to live with the limitations that my position brings along with it self.
Despite these limitations, I look back on my life with satisfaction. And still life is worth while, despite the fact that my zest for living and my physical situation often clash with each other and I am conscious that a long term planning is no longer meaningful for me.
Just because of that last reason, I consider it as my duty to do justice to the reputation of my parents and also to my own sense of honor about a number of imputations. That I am doing this on this moment, holds also connection with the stubbornly returning certainty with which insulting lies are poured out in publications about my family and myself . By publicists as Kikkert, Thomas Ross, Hans Galesloot and Philip Dröge the borders of decency have been far exceeded.
Since I do especially concentrate myself on affairs from the furtherer past, I find a course to the Judge however less applicable and moreover very time-consuming. I do not want to take the risk that I will no longer experience the verdict. It is obviously that I will limit myself till the affairs that I can substantiate and to the subjects that I do consider as hurtful and untrue.
To aspect of the so-called Hofmans Affair, I would like to bring in memory that the Commission-Beel has started an exhausting examination to this in 1956. For formal reasons the report of this Commission has yet not been made public, about that I do speak out the trust that when in the course of time the publication will come, the role of all concerned in these complicated matters will be put in the right daylight. For whose Lockheed is concerned, I want to refer to the ample report of the commission that has examined this affair.
With concern to the stories about illegitimate children, I am fed up with the eagerness with which the nonsense story about two alleged 'London sons' always come up. According to the stories I would have got these sons in the war years with a good friend, Lady Ann Orr Lewis.
Obviously here the burden of proof is turned, in that sense, that I have to prove what I haven't done. An impossible statement. Yet I have given orders to investigate all the British birth records from those years and there is nothing about children form Lady Ann Orr Lewis. Furthermore the best friend of the Lady in that period has given evidence under oath with the insurance that the Lady has never been pregnant in those years. Also the story that my wife [Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, the former Queen] would not know Lady Orr Lewis is incorrect: already in 1946 and in later years she was our family's guest during wintersports holidays.
For me one of the most bizarre imputations that helds connections with the war is a supposed involvement by treachery around the Battle of Arnhem and the so-called "Stadtholders' Letter". For the first subject concerned, I to not want to deny anyone access to a particular interesting new document. It is about an explanation under oath of a high officer who himself has played a major role in the Battle of Arnhem. For that reason I would like to refer to the available report and the documents belonging to it.
In the so-called "Stadtholders' Letter" it goes about an alleged letter of 1942, that would have been signed by me and according to some even by my wife , and in which I would have offered Hitler (according to others Himmler) to run the Netherlands on behalf of the occupiers. Confronted with this nonsense during his weekly press conference on 8 December 1978, then Prime Minister Van Agt directly referred the story to the dustbin. Also the NIOD [Netherlands Institute on War Documentation] remains to the one and the same opinion. In the beginning in 2003 again the NIOD wrote that there has nothing come to the light that rather wisest in the direction of the presence of this letter. After the publication of the the book by Aalders about Leonie Pütz, the NIOD maintains its opinion that it no facts or indications in that light have been brought on the surface that would make the existence of such a letter a possibility.
Yet the entire lynx of my integrity and personal loyalty with respect to the Netherlands and the Allies, needs it scarcely any argument how absurd also this imputation is. In April 1942 - that means: on the moment that it in the 'allied world' it has became clear that the war will end with a German defeat - I would have offered myself to become governor over the Netherlands as an extension of this German regiem? Nonsense!
About my mother [Princess Armgard of Lippe-Biesterfeld born Baroness von Sierstorpff Cramm formerly Countess Bodo von Oeynhausen] often quite common phantasies have been published, such like the story that she would have lived a loose life in her young years and the suggestion that she was a pro-Nazi. All stories about dance parties and such are inept: my mother simply cóuld not dance and was totally a-music. The fabrications about my mother's Nazi-inclinations are as much as nasty. Politics were not in her sphere of interests and the National Socialism was totally in contrary to her character. I would like to point to the fact that in September 1944 my mother has been thrown out of her residence when the SS claimed Schloss Woynowo [then: Schloss Reckenwalde]. The Colonel - Pantchoulidzew - then already had been forced employed by the German Railroads.).
The next passage from Thomas Ross' book I find utterly grieving and inadmissible:
"She remembered that she, in a rowboat under a bridge near one of the pillars, had committed love with two officers." This has been lied from A to Z. It gives an image of my mother that is, also according to everybody wh has known my mother from near, is completely untrue. Recently two good friends of my mother have specifically spoke out the opposite.
Then there yet wrongly is maintained that my mother would have had an intimate relationship with Colonel Pantchoulidzew with whom she would even have been married with. Also has been maintained that the colonel would have been my natural father and that my parents would have indicated him by testament as guardian over me and my brother. Obviously the Colonel has tickled the phantasy of many authors without being self debet to that. Let I start with the assumation that my parents have had a quite happy marriage, in which being loving and caring with each other and the children were gone around. Conjugal tensions, that undoubtedly also were there, remained invisible for my brother and me. My father was on-and-top a gentleman in language and behavior and shared strict standards with my mother. What, next to the children, did my parents share in strong extent federation was the love for equestrian sports, and with them the more greater part of their contacts with friends and acqauintances. Also the contacts with the gifted rider and equestrian sports lover Colonel Pantchoulidzew came from this forward. On 7 July 1922, he came as a friend in our residence for the first time. At the time I was 11 years old. After the death of my - for all clarity: real - father in 1934 Colonel Pantchoulidzew remained there with us he was also more and more helpful by the management of Woynowo [then: Reckenwalde], my parents' large country estate.
Also after the Second World War, Colonel Pantchoulidzew remained of large support to my mother, but their mutual proportion was characterized until the very end by a particular extent of detachment. For the Colonel, my mother remained as well to within as to the outside: "Prinzessin" and "Sie". [Formal German form of 'You']. Anyone who has known my mother is aware of the fact that she was a developed lady was with rather strict standards and at the same time a dear and sensible mother and grandmother.
And concerning Colonel Pantchoulidzew, I want to stress that he has never been maintained as a guardian over my brother and me. Totally according to family tradition, in the last predisposition of my parents the guardianship would have been laid in hands of a member of the family, namely my uncle Julius Ernst [Prince zur Lippe] and when he would no longer have been alive, my father's nephew Georg [Duke] von Sachsen-Meiningen.
Many of the authors involved with this share with each other nastily that their justification of the debited imputations is absolutely inferior. Most justifications consist no more than the referring to earlier similar publications, for which also again no public sources have been mentioned. Also the alibi of anonymity of the sources is a many seen and preventing phenomenon.
To avoid myself making the same mistake, some time ago I have asked mr M. J. D. van der Voet, former director of the Government Information Service, to do investigation to the backgrounds and maintained sources of above matters. To his reports proof material is attached, namely explanations under oath and archives sources. To give complete openness to give and to prevent that men can repeat the named imputations as ' the truth' I have decided to open the concerning report including the sources material. Together with this explanation they form an entire of which freely use can be made.
Despite my age I yet always live my life with telatively a lot of fun and that for two reasons. In 1995, when the honorary doctorate of Nijenrode University was awarded, I named myself the largest beggar of the Netherlands. There is a core of truth in this because I have alwasy begged for the benefit of the good. The success of the through me set up Prince Bernhard Nature Fund for the benefit of small-scale projects on the grounds of nature preservation, offers me yet, as always, a lot of satisfaction. The fight to favor of a healthy natural surroundings for man and animal is after all one of the most important challenges of this moment. That declares also my involvement with and efforts for the Peace Parks Foundation and African Parks.
The most important element for my satisfaction however is formed by the contacts with my many humans and family members. I see it as something preciously on the age of 92, to be spouse, father, grandfather and great-grandfather at the same time. And also that I am still in state to fight for my loved ones, for my parents and for myself.
Prince of the the Netherlands
Soestdijk Palace, February 2004
-----------------------------------
