Although during Bernhardt's lifetime the movement never had more than a few thousand followers primarily concentrated in central Europe (Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Germany) as well as France and Brazil, as of 2021 there are an estimated 40,000 "sealed" adherents.
After having been interned in Britain during WW1 between 1914 and 1919 due to his German nationality, he returned to Germany and began attracting followers, naming this group "Orden: der Gral" (Order: The Grail) in 1921.
In 1923, Bernhardt had a religious experience that led him to declare himself the "Son of Man" and an intermediary between God and humankind akin to Jesus, taking on the name "Abdruschin" (also spelled various other ways).
[5] In 1929 he declared that a "Cosmic Turning Point" had been reached and that the Day of Judgement and the coming of Paradise was imminent, with his followers preparing for this events during the early 1930s.
By 1936, Benhardt's followers started to become disllusioned, with the movement falling apart in 1938, when the Nazi regime annexed Austria and expropriated the Grail Settlement and put Bernhardt under surveillance, allowing him to move to Görlitz and later to Kipsdorf in the Ore Mountains in 1939.
[3] The biggest schism in the movement was in 1956, when due to conflicts over the authenticity of the new edition of The Grail Message, the Brazilian branch of the movement (primarily popular among German Brazilians) led by Roselis von Sass, split away, forming the Order of the Grail on Earth (Ordem do Graal na Terra).
There were subsequently "dozens" of minor schisms of small spinter groups due to disagreements with church leadership and the timing of the coming of the Day of Judgement.
[3] According to the doctrine of the Grail movement everything other than God is "created by the divine radiation of a life-giving energy, which gradually cools down and becomes denser as it gets further away from the source.
From the "ethereal sphere", the spirit undergoes a cycle of reincarnation, causing it "to lose its awareness of its origin and the purpose of its time in the material state", which Bernhardt taught is the root of evil.
Bernhardt taught that Jesus's teachings had been corrupted and that his Grail Message was in contrast able to restore people's abilities to reach the higher spiritual spheres.
Bernhardt's death without his prophecies being fulfilled (which he blamed on "144,000 spirits and the whole of humankind fail[ing] to answer [his] call") caused his followers to become disillusioned, and the movement subsequently regarded the timing of the coming of the Day of Judgement as uncertain.
Bernhardt regarded Vomperberg and its Grail Settlement as the "centre of the word, the ‘Mountain of Salvation’, the ‘Place of Light’, and the biblical Mount Zion".
He carries the insignias of His high Office: the living Cross of the Truth radiating from Him and the Divine Dove above Him, the same in-signias as were borne by the Son of God.