In 1901, he was transferred to the Praia Vermelha Military School, headquartered in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then federal capital, and there he became an ensign-student until finishing his course in 1903.

However, later on, he confirmed his opposition to acting in the repression of that rebellion, which would later form the so-called Prestes Column, a guerrilla force founded by lieutenants who marched through the interior of the country, through the North and Northeast states, aiming at an armed revolution against the federal government and the Old Republic.

[3][5] Regarding the role of Major Klinger in that conflict, Captain Juarez Távora, a member of the Prestes Column, wrote:[6] (...) between the last fortnight of June and the end of July 1925 (...) the Division suffered a tenacious persecution - marked by the clashes of Paraizo, Bahús, Rio-Verdinho, Zeca Lopes and Annapolis - which forced it, at times, to defend itself with sacrifice to deflect the repeated blows that were delivered to it.

The soul of these clashes was Major Bertoldo Klinger - a man to whom multiple circumstances should join the current of heroic claims, which then excited the countrymen - but whom an inexplicable derision of fate had transformed into a pre-excellent support of governmental tyranny.

Besieged in Bahús; contained in Rio-Verdinho; surrounded, again, in Zeca Lopes; and, a month later, beaten in Annapolis - he forced the revolutionary arms into clashes which, if they were not favorable to him, sometimes did not suit the revolution either.

This honor we surrender, here, conscientiously, to Major Bertoldo Klinger.In 1930 he was against the movement that aimed to depose the President of the Republic Washington Luís, although he had contacts with some elements of the Liberal Alliance, who articulated the deposition.

This revolt was prematurely precipitated by him to 9 July 1932, due to a deliberately offensive letter he sent to the newly appointed minister of war, General Augusto Inácio do Espírito Santo Cardoso, earlier that month.

The predecessor of your Excellency was removed, after all, by the outcry aroused by the role he, unaware of the Army personnel and ultra-ambitious, lent himself to, sanctioning all assaults on internal and external discipline, at the whim of a handful of extremists, increasingly frantic in the face of notable disgust.

Everyone can see that the son of your Excellency was the guarantor of this, captain Dulcidio, red extremist from the 13th hour; 2) The Army would like to know if you would resist a health inspection, given the fatal breakdown that the years have produced.

Thus, your appointment is nothing more than a re-edition, thirteen years later, of that notorious invention of a civil minister in the military portfolio, something for which the Army has not yet adapted its organization to this day.

A civilian, or a "military" man who only has the memory and the pension of a military officer, although this pension has been increased for a long time thanks to a strange call to active service, a similar holder of this office will be a minister only in appearance: the prestige of authority, the discipline, deeply suffer damage, in view of the evidence that your local lieutenants in the cabinet are going to rule the colonels and generals, heads of services and commanders of large units; 5) That same prestige of authority, including that of the government, that same discipline, come out laughable if not deplorably, limping in the face of the surprising revelation that the government did not have a general for Minister of War, a government which, however, at its discretion, eliminated from active service a roster of generals and promoted a lot of new ones.

At the end of September 1932, with the failure of the uprising in Rio Grande do Sul by the rebels led by Borges de Medeiros, and when the impossibility of continuing the fighting in São Paulo due to lack of military resources was evident, Klinger proposed an armistice to the federal government with the intention of starting negotiations for the definitive end of the conflict.

In 1947, after the country's redemocratization, he was reincorporated into active service in the Army, after a decision that invalidated his administrative reform that had taken place 15 years earlier, and received the rank of Divisional General counted since 25 December 1945.

[3] In 1940, he published "Ortografia Simplificada Brasileira" (Brazilian Simplified Orthography), a book that generated controversy over the years and also made Klinger a laughingstock on some occasions by the national press because of the unusual proposal to revise the spelling then in force in the country.

[9][10] At the end of 1954, he had a brief role as assistant to General Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa, on the board of the Federal Commission for Supply and Prices, which was linked to the Ministry of Labour.

[18] The Historical, Geographical and Genealogical Institute of Sorocaba, linked to the Academy of Terrestrial Military History of Brazil (AHIMTB), has the name General Bertoldo Klinger.