Bernile Nienau

Bernile, who learned the profession of a technical draftsman, died on 5 October 1943 at 17 in Schwabing Hospital of spinal poliomyelitis. Her grave is located on the Munich West Cemetery.

The fact that Bernile's grandmother and mother were Jewish was already known to Hitler in 1933. On 19 April 1938, Hitler's adjutant Fritz Wiedemann described Hitler's disregard for her Jewish ancestry to subordinate party offices as "a purely human attitude toward the child". However, when Martin Bormann got wind of the lack of "German-bloodedness", the girl and her mother were forbidden to appear in Berghof. Hitler learned about it because his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann complained that Bormann had forbidden him to continue to publish photos showing the Führer as "his child". In his book "Hitler as I Saw Him", Hoffmann writes that Hitler said about Bormann: "There are people who have a true talent to spoil my every joy." While Hoffmann's illustrated book Youth around Hitler which included the photographs of Hitler with Bernile continued to sell, around May 1938 the mother was officially asked to stop any contacts with party leaders.

Probably at the instigation of her mother, Bernile, whose birthday was, like Hitler's, 20 April, pressed in the spring of 1933 in the forefront of the stream of visitors on Obersalzberg to grab Hitler's attention. From that contact she developed a "friendship" that lasted until 1938. In the Federal Archives in Berlin there are 17 letters which the girl wrote, probably with the help of her mother, between 18 January 1935 and 12 November 1939, to Hitler and his chief aide Wilhelm Brückner. An extract:

Bernhardine Nienau (20 April 1926, Dortmund — 5 October 1943, Munich), called Bernile, was a German girl who became known as "the Führer's child" because of her close friendship with Adolf Hitler that lasted from 1933 to 1938.

Nienau was born in Dortmund as the only child of Bernhard Nienau, a physician (June 23, 1887 - February 29, 1926). Her father died shortly before she was born. Her mother Karoline, née Helwig, a nurse (March 15, 1892 - July 26, 1962), moved to Munich and bought a house there, around 1928. Bernile's grandmother Ida Voit, a Roman Catholic teacher of Jewish descent, née Morgenstern (18 July 1867 - 29 December 1942) also lived with them.