Otto von Bismarck

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Otto Eduard Leopold, Duke of Lauenburg, Bismarck, Herzog To Lauenburg; German: Born von Bismarck, Siego von Bismarck, Herzog to Lauenburg; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) build several monuments in honor of the new Reich's founder, Otto von Bismarck, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg; Born von Bismarck (Born von Bismarck; von Bismarck

Many historians praise him as a visionary who was instrumental in unifying Germany and who, when that was not achieved, preserved Europe's stability through adroit diplomacy.

Early years

Bismarck was born in 1815 at Schönhausen, a wealthy family estate west of Berlin, Prussian Saxony. Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck (1771–1845), a Junker estate owner and a former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Luise Mencken (1789–1839), was the well-educated daughter of a senior government official in Berlin. In 1816, the family moved to Kniephof (now Konarzewo, Poland), northeast of Stettin (now Szczecin), in the then-Prussian province of Farther Pomerania. Bismarck spent his childhood in a bucolic setting.

Bismarck had two siblings: Bernhard (1810–1893) and his younger sister Malvine (1827–1908). Bismarck was seen as a typical Prussian Junker image, which he encouraged by wearing military uniforms. However, he was both a scholar and cosmopolitan with a gift for discourse. Bismarck also knew English, French, Italian, Polish, Polish, and Russian.

Bismarck attended Johann Ernst Plamann's primary school, as well as the Friedrich-Wilhelm and Graues Kloster secondary schools. He studied law at University of Göttingen, where he was a soldier of the Corps Hannovera, and then enrolled at the University of Berlin (1833–1835) from 1832 to 1833. He studied agriculture at the University of Greifswald in 1838, while stationed as an army reservist in Greifswald. Bismarck befriended American student John Lothrop Motley at Göttingen. In 1839, Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial, by Motley, who later became an eminent historian and diplomat while remaining close to Bismarck, a memoir about life in a German university. Bismarck was described as a impulsive, dashing boy, but also as a remarkably gifted and charming young man in it.

Despite Bismarck's eager hopes of becoming a diplomat, he began his practical training in Aachen and Potsdam and then resigned, putting his future in jeopardy first. Isabella Loraine-Smith, the daughter of a wealthy clergyman, was the niece of the Duke of Cleveland. Bismarck started a reduced mandatory military service in the Prussian Army in 1838, first serving as a one-year volunteer before becoming a Landwehr officer (reserve). He returned to Schönhausen in the twenties after his mother's burial in his mid-twenties.

Around the age of 30, Bismarck formed an intense friendship with Marie von Thadden-Trieglaff, who recently married Moritz von Blanckenburg, one of his relatives. Bismarck wrote to request the hand in marriage of Marie's cousin, Johanna von Puttkamer (1824–1894), on July 28th, 1847; modern Koczygowy) was married in Alt-Kolziglow (modern Koczygów). Three children were born in their long and happy marriage: Marie (b. Herbert Herbert (b. 1847) b. Herbert Herbert (b.) Wilhelm (b. 1849), and 1849). (1852-85). Johanna was a shy, elderly, and deeply religious woman, but she was known for her sharp tongue in later life.

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Early political career

Bismarck, a thirty-two year old man from 1847, was elected as a representative to the newly elected Prussian legislature, the Vereinigter Landtag. He earned a reputation as a heralded author and reactionary politician with a gift for stinging rhetoric; he also spoke out against the belief that the monarch had a divine right to rule. The Gerlach brothers, a Pietist Lutheran whose ultra-conservative faction of their newspaper, the Neue Preußische Zeitung, which was so named because it featured an Iron Cross on its front page.

Prussia experienced a revolution in March 1848 (one of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe), which completely overthrowrowned King Frederick William IV. Although initially determined to use armed forces to put an end to the uprising, the monarch eventually decided not to leave Berlin for the safety of military headquarters at Potsdam. Bismarck later discovered that there had been a "rattling of sabres in their scabbards" from Prussian officers when they learned that the King would not respond by force rather than by force. He made several compromises to the liberals: he wore the black-red-gold revolutionary colours (as seen on today's Germany flag), pledged to establish a constitution, agreed that Prussia and other German states should unite as a single nation-state, and named Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen as Minister President.

Bismarck had to convert the peasants of his estate into an army at first, and the King's name was marching on Berlin. He traveled to Berlin disguised to provide his assistance, but was later told to make himself useful by arranging food for the Army from his estates in case they were required. Prince Wilhelm, the King's brother, had fled to England, and Bismarck attempted to convince Wilhelm's wife Augusta to place their teenage son Frederick William on the Prussian throne in Frederick William IV's place. Augusta would have none of it and detested Bismarck shortly, despite the fact that he later helped restore a working relationship between Wilhelm and his brother the King. Bismarck was not yet a member of the Landtag, the lower house of the new Prussian legislature. In 1848, the liberal party died in internal conflict. In the meantime, the conservatives regrouped and assembled an inner group of advisors, including the Gerlach brothers, known as "the Camarilla" -- around the King, and regained rein of Berlin. Although a constitution was ratified, its provisions fell short of the revolutionaries' demands.

Bismarck was elected to the Landtag in 1849. He opposed German unification at this point in his career, fearing that Prussia would lose its independence in the process. He accepted his appointment as one of Prussia's representatives at the Erfurt Parliament, a conference of German states that met to negotiate union plans, but he did not do so in order to oppose the body's plans more effectively. The parliament was unable to bring about unification because it lacked the support of the two most important German states, Prussia and Austria. Prussia was humiliated and coerced to back down by Austria (supported by Russia) in the so-called Punctation of Olmütz in September 1850, after a war over the Electorate of Hesse (the Hesse Crisis of 1850), and Prussia's Minister President Radowitz's plan to unify Germany under Prussian rule was also postponed.

Frederick William IV, a German Confederation envoy in 1851, appointed Bismarck as Prussia's Envoy to the Diet of the German Confederation in Frankfurt. Bismarck resigned as a member of the Landtag but was appointed to the Prussian House of Lords a few years later. With the Austrian Count Friedrich von Thun und Hohenstein, he engaged in a war of wills in Frankfurt. When Thun claimed the privileges of smoking and removing his jacket in meetings, he maintained that being treated as an equal by pundy tactics such as imitating Thun. This episode was the genesis of an altercation in the Frankfurt chamber with Georg von Vincke that resulted in a duel between Bismarck and Vincke with Carl von Bodelschwingh as an impartial party, which ended without injury.

Changes in his political convictions, including in the numerous long memoranda sent to his ministerial superiors in Frankfurt, characterized Bismarck's eight years in Frankfurt. Bismarck became less vocal and more pragmatic as a result of his ultraconservative Prussian friends' influence. Prussia would have to allies herself in order to counterattack Austria's newly regained power, according to Prussia. As a result, he became more accepting of the idea of a united German nation. He gradually came to understand that he and his fellow conservatives would lead the way in creating a united nation rather than being eclipsed. He also believed that the middle-class liberals needed a united Germany more than they wanted to shake the traditional powers of society's grip.

Bismarck also tried to protect Russia and a professional relationship with Napoleon III's France, the former being anathema to his conservative allies, the Gerlachs, but it is both critical to threaten Austria and discourage France from allying with Russia. Bismarck wrote a frank letter to Leopold von Gerlach, who wrote to him first that playing chess was foolish. In a famous letter to Leopold von Gerlach, Bismarck wrote that it was foolish to play chess having first put 16 of the 64 squares out of bounds. This was ironic, because France actually became Germany's permanent enemy after 1871 and later allied with Russia against Germany in the 1890s.

Bismarck was alarmed by Prussia's isolation during the Crimean War in which Austria supported Britain and France against Russia; Prussia was not even invited to the peace negotiations in Paris. Fear of a repeat of this pattern of events in the 1870s Eastern Crisis would play a role in Bismarck's signing of the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879.

Frederick William IV suffered a paralysing stroke in October 1857 and his brother Wilhelm assumed the Prussian government as Regent, with his uncle Wilhelm taking over the Prussian government as Regent. Wilhelm was first regarded as a moderate king, whose association with liberal Britain was exemplified by his son Frederick William's marriage to Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. Wilhelm brought in new ministers, moderate conservatives known as the Wochenblatt after their newspaper, as part of his "New Course."

Bismarck was quickly sent by the Regent in Frankfurt, and he appointed him Prussia's ambassador to the Russian Empire. This was a remuneration, according to theory, as Russia was one of Prussia's two most influential neighbors. Bismarck, on the other hand, was excluded from German activities, and he was forced to watch impotently as France drove Austria out of Lombardy during the Italian War of 1859. Bismarck suggested that Prussia exploit Austria's inability to travel her frontiers "as far south as Lake Constance" on the Swiss frontier; instead, Prussia mobilized troops in the Rhineland to prevent further French incursion into Venetia.

Bismarck remained in St Petersburg for four years, during which he almost lost his leg to botched medical care, and he and his potential adversary, Russian Prince Gorchakov, met his future rival, who had been the Russian representative in Frankfurt in the 1850s. Helmuth von Moltke has been appointed as the new Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army and Albrecht von Roon as Minister of War, as well as the task of reorganizing the army. Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon transformed Prussia over the course of the next twelve years.

Despite his lengthy stay in Berlin, Bismarck was not completely detached from German domestic affairs. He remained well-informed thanks to Roon, with whom Bismarck formed a lasting friendship and political alliance. In May 1862, he was sent to Paris to serve as the ambassador to France, and later visited England that summer. These visits allowed him to meet and take note of many adversaries: Napoleon III in France, Prime Minister Palmerston, Foreign Secretary Earl Russell, and Conservative politician Benjamin Disraeli.

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