German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Archbishop of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). Created a cardinal in 1916 in pectore but not published until 1919. From then onward he was Chairman of the Fulda conference of Catholic Bishops and the highest representative of the Catholic Church in Germany.
 
DS - Document Signed: Bottom portion of "circular" letter to Cardinal Gasquet, signed A. Card. Bertram. Accompanied by a small color litho-print from an original oil painting.
 
Adolph Bertram's episcopal career was not without controversy. Throughout the Polish Uprisings against Germany in parts of Upper Silesia, Bertram underlined his pro-German attitude, in line with his previous declaration of being a German bishop attached to the German state. This generated considerable controversy and criticism from Poles. Throughout the upheaveal, he tried to influence the Vatican on behalf of Germany. He, in turn, was called a "German chauvinist" and accused of being "anti-Polish," as he removed Polish priests and replaced them with Germans. He forbade Polish priests from taking part in Polish cultural and political activities but allowed German ones to participate in political agitation. 
 
Beertram questioned the decree of Benedict XV that ordered him to refrain from visiting Upper Silesia during the pleviscite, calling it "the result of Polish intrigue" by August Hlond, a personal friend of Benedict XV.
 
Bertram's relationship with the socio-political landscape of Germany was complex. In 1930 he refused a religious funeral for a well-known Nazy official on the grounds that the principles of National Socialism were incompatible with the Catholic faith. Nevertheless, two years later he sought the permission of Rome regarding joining the Nazi Party but was refused as the Church wanted no involvement with politics. 
 
The following year, the president of an interfaith group sought Bertram's aid in protesting the boycott of Jewish business organized by the Nazis but was refused as he regarded it as purely an economic matter and because, in his opinion, the Jewish press had kept silent about the persecution of Catholics.
 
On the eve of WWII, Nazi Germany and, to a much lesser extent, Poland annexed parts of Czechoslovakia, Sudentenland and Trans-Olza, whose northern part was a component of Bertram's diocese. After the Polish takeover of Trans-Olza, (never internationally recognized) the Polish government requested the Holy See to depose Bertram from jurisdiction in the newly-Polish area. 
 
During the War, Bertram ordered Church celebrations upon Nazi Germany's victory over Poland and France, and with an order to ring bells all aross the Reich upon the news of the German capture of Warsaw in 1939. With his knowledge, the diocese of Breslau issued a statement calling the war with Poland a "holy war" fought to enforce God's orders on how to live and regain "German lost land".
 
As an ex officio head of the German episcopate, Bertram sent greetings on the occasion of Hitler's 50th birthday in 1939 in the name of all German Catholic bishops, an act that angered Cardinal Konrad von Preysing. Bertram was the leading advocate of accommodation as well as the leader of the German church, a combination that reined in other would-be opponents of Nazism.
 
Ironically, however, Bertram opposed what he called the immorality and negopaganism of the Nazi Party. In 1940, Bertram condemned the propaganda and planning for Operation Lebensborn and Nazi vitalism and insemination plans as immoral, saying that Lebensborn was institutionalized adultery. 
 
In 1945, as the Soviets were attacking, Bertram resisted pressure from the Nazi government to leave Breslau, until much of the population was evacuated. He finally left the cith in February or early March and spent the rest of the war at his summer residence at Castle Johannesberg in Jauernig, where he died age 86.
 
It has been claimed, but disputed by many, that among Bertram's papers were instructions to have a Requiem Mass said on the death of Hitler and all Germans who died in the war. The order was never fulfilled and Bertram's personal secretary reported being unaware of the order or any other directive.