Adolf Bertram (14 March 1859 – 6 July 1945) was archbishop of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

[1] On 4 December 1916 Bertram was created a cardinal but only in pectore for fear of provoking a negative reaction against the Church on the part of the Allies, especially from the Italian side.

[2] A special committee of 91 priests from Upper Silesia issued a declaration to Holy See in which they warned of the consequences of Bertram's actions and growing "bitterness" among the population that would harm the Catholic Church in the long term.

On 30 November, at the residence of Cardinals Aleksander Kakowski and Dalbor and Bishops Bilczewski, Sapieha, Teodorowicz, Fulman and Przeździecki issued a letter to Pope to warn him that Bertram engaged in political activity on behalf of German side and threatened to break relations between the Vatican and the Polish state as well as the Polish nation.

Eventually, the Polish government decided to issue a protest note, and the Vatican revoked its delegate to Poland, Achille Ratti, who would later become Pope Pius XI.

On 17 December the Holy See established for these areas an exempt Apostolic Administration, which it elevated as the new Diocese of Katowice on 28 October 1925 by the bull Vixdum Poloniae Unitas.

By his bull "Pastoralis officii nostri" Pope Pius XI elevated Bertram to Archbishop of Breslau on 13 August 1930, carrying out the stipulations of the concordat between the Free State of Prussia and the Holy See.

Bertram then supervised three suffragans within Breslau's new Eastern German Ecclesiastical Province, the dioceses of Berlin and Ermland as well as the Territorial Prelature of Schneidemühl.

In 1930, he refused a religious funeral for a well-known Nazi official on the grounds that the principles of National Socialism were incompatible with the Catholic faith.

[4]In a widely publicized statement, he criticized as a grave error the one-sided glorification of the Nordic race and the contempt for divine revelation that was increasingly taught throughout Germany.

[4] In 1932, he sought the permission of Rome regarding about joining the Nazi Party, but it was refused as the Church wanted no involvement with politics.

On 23 December 1939 Cesare Orsenigo, Nuncio to Germany, appointed – with effect of 1 January 1940 – Bertram – and Olomouc' Archbishop Leopold Prečan – as apostolic administrators for exactly those Catholic parishes of Trans-Olza, where Pius XI had deposed them in 1938.

Bertram finally decided to leave the city in late February or early March 1945 and spent the rest of the war at his summer residence at Castle Johannesberg in Jauernig (Czechoslovak part of Breslau diocese, Sudetenland), where he died on 6 July 1945 at the age of 86.