Bormann was born as Martin Adolf Bormann 14-04-1930 in Grünwald, Bavaria, the oldest of the ten children of the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and private secretary to Führer, Adolf Hitler, Martin Bormann
and his wife, Gerda Buch (1909–1946)
. She got the Mother’s Cross of Honour for her ten children. The Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei), was the name of the head office for the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) . The organisation rivaled for influence with the Reich Chancellery under SS Obergruppenführer Dr. Hans Heinrich Lammers.
His brothers and sisters from one died shortly after birth, Ilse Bormann born 09-07-1931; twin sister Ehrengard died after the birth; named after her godmother Ilse Hess, Irmgard Bormann, born 25-07-1933, Rudolf Gerhard Bormann born 31-08- 934; named after his godfather Rudolf Hess,
Heinrich Hugo Bormann born 13-06-1936; named after his godfather Heinrich Himmler, Eva Ute Bormann
born 04-08-1938, Gerda Bormann born 23-10-1940, Fred Hartmut Bormann born 04-03-1942 Volker Bormann born 18-09-1943.
The children were regular guests at the Berghof and Eva Braun loved them
When Martin was baptized in the evangelical church, Hitler acted as his godfather. Nicknamed Krönzi, short for Kronprinz, crown prince and until he was 15, he loved his father as any child should and he was an ardent young Nazi, attending the Nazi Party Academy of Matrei am Brenner in the Tyrol from 1940 to 1945. The Nazi academy was a project by the chief ideologist of the Nazi Party Alfred Rosenberg to create an elite.
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.” The dictator himself remained impassive throughout. 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 Italian South Tyrol. Unable to get there, he found himself stranded in Salzburg where the Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer 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. Friedrich Rainer was presumeble executed on 18-08-1947 in Ljublijana, age 44.
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 on 23 April 1946, age 37. 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.
In 2011, Bormann was accused by a former pupil at an Austrian Catholic boarding school of raping him as a 12-year-old when Bormann was working there as a priest and schoolmaster in the early 1960s. Other former pupils alleged severe physical violence had been used against them and others. Bormann denied knowledge of the events.
Death and burial ground of Bormann, Adolf Martin.
Martin Adolf Bormann died on 11-03-2013, age 82, in Herdecke, North Rhine Westphalla, Germany and is buried in the cemetery Zeppelinstrasse in Herdecke, Section 5, grave 957b.
Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster: robhopmans@outlook.com
Leave a Reply