Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg
Arms: Three coats tierced in pairle reversed: 1st Parted per bend Azure and Gules a bend Argent, overall a two-handled vase Or banded Gules, for Vasa; 2nd Azure a bridge of three spans with two towers Argent over waves of water in base Argent and Azure, and in chief an eagle displayed wings inverted above a bundle of thunderbolts, and in topmost chief the stars of Charles’s Wain all Or, for Bernadotte; 3rd Azure a paschal lamb passant Argent enhaloed Or and supporting a gonfannon Argent charged with a cross couped Gules, for Visborg; overall dividing the coats a pairle formy reversed Or.
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: Source of Blazon AND B&W illustration for background: “Ointroducerad Adel 1990”, Kalender Ă–ver Ointroducerad Adels Förening 1990, edited by Lars Wikström. Blazon translated by D.Q. Wedvick and re-worked by J.H. Gaylor. Text adapted by D.Q.Wedvick from: “The Curtain Falls, by Count Folke Bernadotte, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1945 and the Wikipedia article,”Folke Bernadotte”.
Count Folke Bernadotte was born on 2 January 1895, a Swedish morganatic royal and descendant of Marshal Bernadotte one of Napoleon’s marshals who became in 1818, Charles XIV of Sweden, and was the nephew of King Gustav V. He became a soldier, a cavalry officer in the Swedish Royal Horse Guards, and in 1928 married an American, Estelle Romaine Manville of Pleasantville, NY by whom he had a son, Folke, who in turn has many living children and grandchildren. He later became head of the Swedish Boy Scouts but became famous during WW2 as Vice Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross for his successful negotiations with the nazi leaders to release thousands of Scandinavians and thousands of Jews from concentration camps during 1944-45. In May 1948 He was appointed the UN Mediator in Palestine but was assassinated in Jerusalem on Friday, 17 September 1948, by the Jewish militant Zionist group, Lehi, whom the British called “the Stern gang”, who had a three man killing team murder Count Bernadotte with a Tommy gun at point blank range through his car’s open window. Posthumously he was awarded one of the first Dag Hammarskjöld Medals given to UN peacekeepers who are killed in the line of duty. dqw 20100703
The artwork is a rendering by John Hamilton Gaylor.
Wedvick Armorial, 159a, Bernadotte, 20100703
