| Abd-ru-shin/Abdruschin | |
| Birth Name: | Oskar Ernst Bernhardt |
| Birth Date: | 18 April 1875 |
| Birth Place: | Bischofswerda, Kingdom of Saxony, German Empire |
| Death Place: | Kipsdorf, Saxony, Germany |
| Nationality: | German |
| Other Names: | Abd-ru-shin, Abdruschin, Abdrushin |
| Occupation: | Author |
| Known For: | |
| Website: | Abd-ru-shin |
Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, also known as Abd-ru-shin or Abdruschin (18 April 1875 – 6 December 1941) was a German religious leader, best known as the author of The Grail Message and as prophet and leader of the Grail Movement, a millenarian new religious movement. Beginning in the 1920s, Abd-ru-shin proclaimed that the Millennial kingdom of God would begin on Earth during the mid 1930s, drawing from Christian legend, as well as Theosophy and other Western Esotericism.
Bernhardt was born in Bischofswerda, in the Kingdom of Saxony, part of the German Empire, in 1875, to a innkeeping family.[1] He trained in business, graduating from a business school. Bernhardt established his own business in 1897 and got married, but was accused of fraud on separate occasions by his mother in law and former business partners, and spent 13 months in prison. From around 1900, he traveled and wrote travel books, stories, and plays, with his plays becoming somewhat popular. He was separated from his wife and children and living London when World War I broke out (having recently returned from a business trip to New York) and in 1915 he was interned by the British Government on the Isle of Man due to his German nationality. He was released in the spring of 1919 and returned to Germany. He likely first began to forumulate his religious ideas during his internment. On Good Friday 1923, Bernhardt proclaimed that Jesus "came down to the Earth in order to transfer his task of the Mediator between God and mankind to the Son of Man." He began to write the religious writings of what ultimately become beginning in 1923 and completed it in 1931. From 1924 he used the pen name "Abd-ru-shin" (originally "Abdruschin") of allegedly Persian-Arabic origin, which Bernhardt originally interpreted as meaning “The Son of the Holy Spirit”, but which many later authors have translated as "Son of Light". Bernhardt claimed to be the Messiah or Son of Man,[2]