Peter Bernauer was brought up in
Rickenbach, Baden-Württemberg. As a youngster he played Basketball for his local club and was called into the Germany national team. He played his youth football at the small club FC Bergalingen. Later he moved to FC Wehr 1912 and started his senior football career by SV 08 Laufenburg. After good performances for Laufenburg, Peter Bernauer trained on a trial basis with
FC Aarau under head-coach
Ottmar Hitzfeld. But at that time, the Aarau squad already had
Uwe Wassmer and two other foreigners on their payroll, therefore for Bernauer, a commitment didn't work out. Bernauer joined the
FC Basel's first team in their
1987–88 season and signed his first professional contract under head-coach
Urs Siegenthaler. After playing in four test games, Bernauer played his domestic league debut for his new club in the first match of the season, an away match on 8 August 1987 as Basel were defeated 0–1 by
Aarau. His team mates included goalie
Urs Suter, defender
Massimo Ceccaroni, and
Swiss national team players such as
Adrian Knup,
Dominique Herr and
Peter Nadig. Despite this personally strongly occupied team Basel were relegated to the
Nationalliga B after the
1987–88 Nationalliga A season. Bernauer scored his first goal for his club in the
Swiss Cup match on 13 November 1988. It was an away game and it was the winning goal as Basel won 1–0 after extra time against lower tier FC Töss. He scored his first league goal for his club on 27 November in the home game in the
St. Jakob Stadium. Unfortunately it could not help the team, because Basel were defeated 1–4 by
Baden. For three season Bernauer fought together and tried to win promotion to the top level, but to no avail. Then Bernauer received an enquiry from
Werder Bremen asking if he wanted to do a trial training there. The offer from the north of Germany sounded tempting, because coached by
Otto Rehhagel they had a good Bundesliga team. As Bernauer packed his bags and drove north, Basel's coach
Ernst-August Künnecke was furious and deleted him from the squad completely. Bernauer's time with Basel ended abruptly and early. The move to Werder did not come to stand. Bernauer would have liked to sign for English club
Stoke City for the 1991–92 season. Coach at that time was
Lou Macari and he used Bernauer several times in friendly matches. Bernauer would have fitted well into the team structure. However, the transfer failed due to the then substantial transfer fee of 250,000 francs. Bernauer ended his professional football career and returned to Laufenburg as amateur during the seasons 1991–1994. He then spent one year by
BSC Old Boys (this was probably a semi-professional contract) and one year by
FC Bülach before he ended his career by FC Riehen and FC Pratteln. ==Private life==