Prince Bernhard, 93; Father of the Netherlands’ Queen

Prince Bernhard, the father of the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix, died Wednesday. He was 93 and had battled cancer.

Regular broadcasts on Dutch television and radio were interrupted for the announcement of his death by the Royal House. The Dutch national anthem was played in his honor.

Bernhard had been staying at the royal palace in Soestdijk, where he lived for six decades with his wife, the former Queen Juliana. She died in March at the age of 94.

The German-born Bernhard, one of the most popular figures in the Dutch royal family, received a stream of family visitors this week. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende had said the “whole country sympathized” with him in his illness.

Bernhard gained respect from the Dutch with his service as a pilot for the Allies in World War II and his help in rebuilding the Netherlands, devastated by Nazi occupation.

But his image was tarnished by a bribery scandal late in his wife’s reign and by his openly rocky marriage and affairs.

Tall, handsome and active into his 90s, Bernhard was a dapper dresser who wore glasses and a trademark carnation in his lapel.

Outside the Netherlands, he was seen as a jet-setting, charismatic ambassador for the Dutch during postwar reconstruction.

He helped found the World Wildlife Fund in 1961 and became its first president. He also is credited with establishing the Bilderberg group -- a secretive annual discussion forum for prominent politicians, thinkers and businessmen -- which he chaired from 1954 to 1976.

Bernhard was born Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld, of impoverished German nobility, in Jena, Germany, on June 29, 1911.