Bernard II was related to the Habsburg dynasty via his older brother Karl I, who had married Catherine of Austria, a sister of Emperor Frederick III.

After his father's death in 1453, he returned to Baden, where he agreed with his brother to give up his claim to part of the margraviate.

Under pressure, after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the imperial Habsburg family began preparing a crusade against the expanding Ottoman Empire.

On the occasion of Bernard's beatification, Margrave August Georg Simpert constructed the Bernhardus fountain in Rastatt.

His great-niece, Sibylle of Baden, who was married to Count Philipp III of Hanau-Lichtenberg, founded a high altar in the St. Nicholas church in Babenhausen on which Bernhard is shown on its left wing on the inside.

On 8 November 2017 Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to issue a decree recognising Bernhard's heroic virtue.