[citation needed] Sometime in the mid-1870s Gertrud von Sperling met her future husband in Stettin, where he belonged to the General Command of the II Army Corps.

[citation needed] In his 1920 autobiography, Paul von Hindenburg praised Gertrud as "a loving wife, who through joy and sorrow faithfully and tirelessly worked with me and took care of me... My best friend and comrade".

She had a keen interest in theater, music, and painting, and corresponded with many prominent contemporaries, such as the industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau, whom shortly before her death she urged he accept the post of Foreign Minister.

She was initially buried in Hanover until 1927, when, at her husband's request, she was exhumed and reburied at the East Prussian ancestral home of the von Hindenburgs, the manor Neudeck in Rosenberg, which had at that time been returned to the family.

Later, to prevent the bodies falling into the hands of Soviet Armed Forces as they approached East Prussia in spring 1945, the coffins were again removed on 12 January 1945 by Hitler's orders to Königsberg on the cruiser Emden.