The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

OTTO BISMARCK

Prince Otto Edward Leopold Von Bismarck (known as the 'Iron Chancellor') was a Prussian diplomat and statesman and Duke of Lauenburg. He was born in 1815 at Schonhausen, Brandenburg and died in 1898. He studied law and agriculture at Gottingen, Berlin and Greifswald.

He entered the army and became lieutenant in the Landwehr. After a brief interval devoted to his estates and to the office of inspector of dikes, he became in 1846 a member of the provincial diet of Saxony, and in 1847 of the Prussian diet. In 1851 he was appointed representative of Prussia in the diet of the German Federation at Frankfort, where with brief interruptions he remained until 1859, exhibiting the highest ability in his efforts to checkmate Austria and place Prussia at the head of the German states.

From 1859 until 1862 he was ambassador at St Petersburg, and in the latter year, after an embassy to Paris of five months' duration, was appointed first minister of the Prussian crown.

The Lower House persistently refusing to pass the bill for the reorganization of the army, Bismarck at once dissolved it in October 1862, closing it for four successive sessions until the work of reorganization was complete. When popular feeling had reached its most strained point the Schleswig-Holstein question acted as a diversion, and Bismarck - by the skilful manner in which he added the duchies to Prussian territory, checkmated Austria, and excluded her from the new German confederation, in which Prussia held the first place - became the most popular man in Germany.

As chancellor and president of the Federal Council he secured the neutralization of Luxembourg in place of its cession by Holland to France; and though in 1868 he withdrew for a few months into private life, he resumed office before the close of the year. A struggle between Germany and France appearing to be sooner or later inevitable, Bismarck, having made full preparations, brought matters to a head on the question of the Hohenzollern candidature for the Spanish throne. Having carried the war to a successful issue, he became chancellor and prince of the new German empire. Subsequently, in 1872, he alienated the Roman Catholic party by promoting adverse legal measures and expelling the Jesuits. He then resigned his presidency for a year, though still continuing to advise the emperor. Towards the close of 1873 he returned to power, retaining his position until, in March 1890, he disagreed with the emperor and tendered his resignation. In 1878 he presided at the Berlin Congress, in 1880 at the Berlin Conference, and in 1884 at the Congo Conference. His life was twice attempted - at Berlin in 1866, and at Kissingen in 1874.
Research Otto Bismarck