48 Fun Facts About Otto Von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck's firm rule and Realpolitik earned him what nickname?

The Iron Chancellor. After three wars made Germany, he fought no more: he spent his two decades as chancellor keeping Europe at peace through a web of alliances.

Under Bismarck, Prussia fought three short wars against which three countries?

Denmark, Austria and France. The three quick victories in seven years united Germany around Prussia and left the German-speaking Austrians outside the new nation.

Bismarck took office in 1862 amid a deadlock over funding what?

A larger army. Deputies had refused to fund the king's military reforms, and he was ready to abdicate before Bismarck offered to govern without an approved budget.

Bismarck said in 1862 the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and votes but by what?

Iron and blood. He said it to parliament's budget committee days after taking office, and the line, popularly flipped to 'blood and iron', came to stand for his whole brand of power politics.

Where was Bismarck born in 1815?

Schönhausen. His family sold part of the estate when he was young, so for his 70th birthday in 1885 a national fund bought it back and presented it to him.

Bismarck came from which class of Prussian landed nobility?

Junker. That was his father's side only: his mother came from a middle-class family of officials and academics, and she steered him to city schools and a law degree.

Which breed were Bismarck's dogs, so famous that Germans nicknamed them 'dogs of the Empire'?

Great Dane. He kept the giant dogs at his side as bodyguards, and the nickname Reichshund, 'dog of the Empire', spread from his pets to the whole breed.

After the 1866 war Bismarck annexed which kingdom, deposing its king?

Hanover. Its crown had been joined to Britain's until 1837; its king backed the losing side, and while Bismarck took no land from Austria itself, he made Hanover a Prussian province.

Whom did Bismarck marry in 1847?

Johanna von Puttkamer. Her family was famed for its devout Pietism, and while courting her the young squire had a religious conversion that steadied him for life.

In 1851 Bismarck was appointed Prussia's envoy to the Diet of the German Confederation in which city?

Frankfurt. In its sessions only Austria's envoy presumed to smoke, so Bismarck took out a cigar and asked him for a light, claiming equal rank for Prussia.

Bismarck served as Prussian ambassador to which two countries before becoming Minister President?

Russia and France. In St Petersburg he won the goodwill of the tsar's court, and in Paris he sized up Napoleon III, the emperor he would beat in war eight years later.

Bismarck kept collecting taxes without an approved budget by pointing to a legal what in the Prussian constitution?

Loophole. The constitution did not say what happened when no budget passed, so he simply carried on with the last one and collected taxes that way for four years.

Under the 1865 Gastein Convention, Prussia took Schleswig while Austria received which duchy?

Holstein. The deal lasted under a year: when Austria took the duchies' future to the federal Diet in 1866, Prussia called it a breach and marched its troops into Holstein.

How long did the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 last?

Seven weeks. It is still called the Seven Weeks' War, and the speed was deliberate: Bismarck pressed for a quick end before France or another power could step in.

Which battle decided the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 in Prussia's favour?

Königgrätz. The king and his generals wanted to march on to Vienna, but Bismarck talked them out of it and gave Austria a lenient peace.

Which fish is sold across Germany under Bismarck's name?

Herring. He is said to have loved the vinegar-cured fillets, and rival tales credit a Flensburg innkeeper or a Stralsund fishmonger with putting his name on them.

In May 1866 a student fired at Bismarck at close range on which street?

Unter den Linden. Bismarck spun round and seized the gunman himself, then walked home barely hurt; the student killed himself in custody that night.

What federation did Bismarck create under Prussian leadership after Austria's defeat in 1866?

The North German Confederation. Bismarck gave its parliament universal male suffrage, wagering that ordinary voters would turn out to be more conservative than the liberals.

What is the edited account Bismarck published in 1870 to goad France into war called?

The Ems Dispatch. Bismarck trimmed the king's polite telegram from the spa of Bad Ems until each side seemed to have snubbed the other, and France declared war within a week.

The 1870 crisis that led to the Franco-Prussian War began when a Hohenzollern prince was offered which country's throne?

Spain. The prince withdrew, but France then demanded a promise that no Hohenzollern would ever take the Spanish crown, and the king's refusal became the spark for war.

Napoleon III was captured at which battle of the Franco-Prussian War?

Sedan. Capturing an emperor did not end the war: Paris declared a republic, fought on, and held out under siege for more than four months.

The King of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on 18 January 1871 in which room?

The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The ceremony was staged in Louis XIV's palace while Paris was still under siege, and in 1919 France had the treaty that ended the First World War signed in the same room.

Which two provinces did France cede in 1871, poisoning Franco-German relations for decades?

Alsace and part of Lorraine. The generals wanted the land as a buffer, and France did not forget: the two were not French again until 1918.

Which British magazine ran 'Dropping the Pilot', the famous 1890 cartoon of Bismarck leaving the ship of state?

Punch. Its artist John Tenniel, who also illustrated Alice in Wonderland, drew the old pilot stepping off as the Kaiser idly watches; Bismarck, sent a copy, reportedly called it a fine one.

In the only known recording of his voice, made in 1889, Bismarck recited the opening lines of which anthem?

La Marseillaise. On the same Edison cylinder he recited an American song, a student drinking song and a German poem, yet German papers reporting the session left the French anthem out.

What title was Bismarck given in 1871 after unification?

Prince (Fürst). With the rank came a gift from the emperor, a great tract of royal forest, which made a squire of modest means a wealthy landowner at last.

Bismarck's 1870s campaign against the Catholic Church in Prussia is known by what name?

Kulturkampf. The word, popularised by the liberal scientist Rudolf Virchow, means 'culture struggle', and the struggle failed: it emptied hundreds of parishes yet only stiffened Catholic resistance.

Which religious order was expelled from Germany in 1872 during Bismarck's anti-Catholic campaign?

The Jesuits. The 1872 law cast them as emissaries of Rome and closed their houses across Germany, and it outlived Bismarck: softened only in 1904, it was not repealed until 1917.

Bismarck's 1870s anti-Catholic campaign set out to break which party but ended by strengthening it?

The Centre Party. Formed in 1870 to speak for Germany's Catholics, it soon held about a quarter of the Reichstag's seats, and persecution only bound Catholic voters to it more tightly.

Two failed attempts in 1878 to kill which man let Bismarck outlaw a rival party's organisations?

Kaiser Wilhelm I. Neither gunman acted for the party Bismarck blamed, yet he sent parliament home, campaigned on the scare and won a ban that was renewed for twelve years.

Bismarck's welfare programme, his 'practical Christianity', was mainly designed to undermine which movement?

Socialism. He hoped state insurance would woo workers away from the Social Democrats, but the party he had outlawed went on gaining votes at election after election.

Bismarck's first successful social insurance law, passed in 1883, covered what?

Sickness. Workers paid two-thirds of the premiums and employers a third, and for the first time seeing a doctor became the normal thing for an insured factory hand.

Bismarck's 1889 law made Germany the first country with a national scheme of what?

Old-age pensions. They were paid only from the age of 70; the famous retirement age of 65 comes from a 1916 change, made eighteen years after Bismarck died.

What name was given to Bismarck's 1873 pact linking the rulers of Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary?

The Three Emperors' League. It bound the three conservative empires together so that France could find no ally, but Russian and Austrian rivalry in the Balkans broke it up by 1887.

The 1878 congress at which Bismarck offered to act as Europe's 'honest broker' met in which city?

Berlin. He kept the powers from war over the Balkans, but the settlement stripped Russia of much of what it had just won from the Ottomans.

What was Bismarck's secret 1887 agreement with Russia to prevent a Franco-Russian alliance called?

The Reinsurance Treaty. When his successors let it lapse in 1890, Russia went looking for a new partner, and the alliance with France that he had worked to prevent soon took shape.

Bismarck's 1882 Triple Alliance joined Germany and the Habsburg empire with which third country?

Italy. It signed up in anger at France, which had just seized Tunisia, a land many Italians had marked out as a colony of their own.

Which Kaiser forced Bismarck to resign in March 1890?

Wilhelm II. After a disastrous election Bismarck wanted a showdown with his opponents, but the young emperor refused to open his reign with bloodshed and made him resign.

Kaiser Frederick III, who reigned only 99 days, married which monarch's eldest daughter?

Queen Victoria. Bismarck had dreaded the match from the start, fearing English influence at court, but Frederick was already dying of throat cancer when he finally came to the throne.

Which general succeeded Bismarck as chancellor in 1890?

Leo von Caprivi. Within months of taking over he bargained with Britain for a corridor from German South West Africa to the Zambezi, the finger of land known as the Caprivi Strip.

Which title did the Kaiser confer on Bismarck at his dismissal in 1890, an honour he asked not to use?

Duke of Lauenburg. It was a consolation prize from the man who had just forced him out; he never used it, and it died with him instead of passing to his son.

The battleship Bismarck, launched in 1939 by the chancellor's granddaughter, sank which British warship in 1941?

HMS Hood. A shell from the Bismarck exploded in the Hood's magazine, and the Royal Navy threw everything into the chase, sinking the German ship three days later.

Bismarck died in 1898 at which estate, where he is entombed in a mausoleum?

Friedrichsruh. The estate lay in the forest the old emperor had given him in 1871, and from it the sacked chancellor spent eight years sniping at his successors in the press.

What does the epitaph Bismarck chose for his own tomb call him?

A loyal servant of Wilhelm I. The line names only the old emperor he served for 26 years and says nothing of the one who dismissed him.

Which US state's capital has been named after Bismarck since 1873?

North Dakota's. The Northern Pacific Railway renamed its new town on the Missouri after the chancellor in the hope of drawing German settlers and German money to the line.

In 1872, at odds with the pope, Bismarck vowed 'We will not go to' which place?

Canossa. Emperor Henry IV is said to have waited three days in the snow there in 1077 to have his excommunication lifted; Bismarck's vow became a catchphrase, yet he too ended by making peace with Rome.

While stationed as an army reservist in 1838, what subject did Bismarck study at Greifswald?

Agriculture. He was about to take over the family's struggling estates with his brother, and within a few years of hard work the two had put them back on a sound footing.

Which north German port raised the largest Bismarck monument of all, a towering figure completed in 1906?

Hamburg. The colossus looks out over the harbour from a hill above the landing stages, and in the Second World War the vaults beneath it were fitted out as an air-raid shelter.