Adolf Martin Bormann

Adolf Martin "Krönzi" Bormann in the uniform (kleiner DJ.-Dienstanzug) of the Deutsches Jungvolk

Adolf Martin Bormann (b. 14 April 1930 in Grünwald bei Munich, Bavaria, Germany; d. 11 March 2013 in Herdecke, Germany) was a German theologian and laicized Roman Catholic priest. He was the eldest of the ten children of Martin Bormann. Young Adolf was nicknamed "Krönzi", short for Kronprinz (German for crown prince). He attended the Reichsschule Feldafing from 1940 until 1945, a NSDAP school on Lake Starnberg located in a villa neighborhood in Feldafing. After WWII, he was only called "Martin" avoiding "Adolf". He wrote the book Leben gegen Schatten (Bonifatius, Paderborn 1996) and was awarded the "Alfred-Müller-Felsenburg-Preis for upright [critical] literature" (German: Alfred-Müller-Felsenburg-Preis für aufrechte Literatur) in 2002. When he spoke about his father, Adolf Martin Bormann distinguished between the strict but dearly beloved father he personally experienced and the political figure whose actions he condemned.

Life

The families of Martin Bormann and Albert Speer as guests of Adolf Hitler in the "great hall" (Große Halle) of the Berghof in Berchtesgaden (Bavaria).

When Martin was baptized in the evangelical church, Hitler acted as his godfather. [...] On another occasion, the eight-year-old Martin was presented to the Fuhrer. “Heil Hitler, mein Fuhrer!” the little boy proclaimed, only to receive a hard slap from his father. “I’d forgotten that to greet the Fuhrer you had to say Heil, not Heil Hitler.” [...] His family home was next to Hitler’s within the Fuhrer’s Berchtesgaden compound, and he remembers “a big fuss” one day when he was seven. Neville Chamberlain was visiting Adolf Hitler. On 15-04-1945, the school closed and young Martin was advised by a party functionary in Munich, named Hummel, to try to reach his mother in the still German-occupied hamlet of Val Gardena/Groden, near Selva in South Tyrol. Unable to get there, he found himself stranded in Salzburg where the Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer (de) provided him with false identity papers and he found hospitality with a Catholic farmer, Nikolaus Hohenwarter, at the Querleitnerhof, halfway up a mountain in the Salzburg Alps. After Germany surrendered, his mother, Gerda Buch, the daughter of SS Obergruppenführer Walter Buch, was subjected to relentless interrogation by officers of the CIC (Combined Intelligence Committee, the joint American-British intelligence body). She died of abdominal cancer in the prison hospital at Merano [...]. She was buried at the military cemetery in Merano with a German soldier, Horst Brügger in the same grave, nr 610. Later her remains were removed, cremated and scattered in the sea. The following year, her teenage son Martin learned of his mother’s death from an article in the Salzburger Nachrichten and only then confessed his true identity to Nikolas Hohenwarter, who reported the information to his local priest at Weissbach bei Lofer. Subsequently the priest advised the rector of the Church of Maria Kirchtal, who then took the boy into his care. Bormann converted to Catholicism. While serving as an altar boy at Maria Kirchtal, he was arrested by American intelligence officers and imprisoned at Zell am See for several days of interrogation before being returned to his parish. He stayed there until he joined the religious congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1854 by Father Jules Chevalier at Issoudun, France. He had been able to resume contact with his brothers and sisters, all of whom, except for one sister, had also been received into the Catholic Church. After Hitler committed suicide on 30-04-1945, age 64, his fugitive father Martin Bormann suddenly vanished. Martin Adolf Bormann said he did not know what happened to his father when interrogated: he was repeatedly tested for lies but was deemed truthful. Over the coming years, several organisations, including the CIA and the West German Government, attempted to locate Bormann without success. Sightings were reported at points all over the world, including Australia, Denmark, Italy, and South America. In 1971 Bormann supported the government officials’ conclusion that the disappearance of Martin Bormann Sr. was inconclusive and the search for Bormann Sr. was officially ended in November 1971. Thereafter, on 07-12-1972, construction workers uncovered human remains near Lehrter station in West Berlin. Upon autopsy, fragments of glass were found in the jaw of the skeleton, which was identified as Martin Bormann Sr. through reconstructed dental records; the glass fragments suggested he had committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule to avoid capture. Forensic examiners determined that the size of the skeleton and shape of the skull were identical to Bormann’s. The remains were conclusively identified as Bormann’s in 1998 when German authorities ordered genetic testing on fragments of the skull. On 16-08-1999 the remains were cremated and Martin Bormann Jr. was permitted to scatter his father’s ashes in the Baltic Sea.

On 28 July 1958, he was ordained a priest. Early 1960 he led the wedding of his brother Gerhard Bormann as a priest in the the Barockchurch Maria Kirchental. In 1961, he was sent to the newly independent Congo, where he worked as a missionary until 1964, when he had to flee the country due to the Simba rebellion. In 1966, he returned to the Congo for a year. Following a near-fatal injury in 1969 Bormann was nursed back to health by a Religious Sister, Rosemarie, nicknamed Cordula. He ultimately left the priesthood in the early 1970s, and they later both renounced their vows and were married in 1971. They never had any children. Bormann became a teacher of theology and retired in 1992. In 2001, he toured schools in Germany and Austria, speaking about the horrors of the Third Reich, and even visited Israel, meeting with Holocaust survivors.

Death

Bormann died on 11 March 2013, age 82, in Herdecke, North Rhine Westphalla, Germany and is buried in the cemetery Zeppelinstraße in Herdecke; final grave: section 5, grave 957 b.

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