Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born 3 July 1934 in Bamberg) is a retired German Bundeswehr general.
He is the oldest of five children of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and nephew of Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, two German aristocrats who were active in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
After the failed assassination and the subsequent executions, Claus's pregnant wife Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg was interned in a concentration camp and separated from her four children, who were taken to a foster home in Bad Sachsa. Until the end of the war they were forced to use a different family name, as von Stauffenberg was not accepted as their name. Berthold Maria von Stauffenberg was the oldest of the children and had just turned ten at the time of the failed assassination plot.
Berthold graduated from Schule Schloss Salem and studied engineering before becoming an officer in West Germany's new army as soon as it was established in 1956. From 1972 to 1974, he was commander of Tank Battalion 11 at Munster, Lower Saxony, Germany's largest military base. His career culminated as Supreme Commander of Territorial Command South, and he retired in 1994 with the rank of Generalmajor, as Germany's oldest soldier after 38 years of service.
In Thurn on 22 September 1958, he had married Mechthild Kunigunde Gräfin Bentzel von Sternau und Hohenau von Sturmfelder-Horneck (born 27 January 1938 in Bamberg), and moved to her family's hometown of Oppenweiler in Southern Germany. They have three sons:
- Claus Philipp Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (b. 1 June 1959), married to Iranian Maryam Zahedi (b. Iran, 31 January 1962), and has one daughter:
- Valerie Roxana Monika Mechtild Maria Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (b. Erlangen, 17 February 1992)
- Sebastian Heimrich Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (b. 2 December 1961), unmarried and without issue
- Gottfried Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (b. 8 October 1964), unmarried and without issue
In July 2004, for his 70th birthday and 60th anniversary of the plot, he was interviewed by several newspapers, and was also invited to a ceremony at the former Wolfschanze.
In 2006, he participated with Richard von Weizsäcker and others in the opening ceremony of the von Stauffenberg Memorial in Stuttgart.
In 2007, von Stauffenberg voiced concerns over the film Valkyrie, because the actor portraying his father, Tom Cruise, is a member of the Church of Scientology.[1]
