OTTO EDWARD LEOPOLD VON BISMARCK

(1815-)

BY MUNROE SMITH

Otto Edward Leopold, fourth child of Charles and Wilhelmina von
Bismarck, was born at Schoenhausen in Prussia, April 1, 1815. The family
was one of the oldest in the "Old Mark" (now a part of the province of
Saxony), and not a few of its members had held important military or
diplomatic positions under the Prussian crown. The young Otto passed his
school years in Berlin, and pursued university studies in law (1832-5)
at Goettingen and at Berlin. At Goettingen he was rarely seen at lectures,
but was a prominent figure in the social life of the student body: the
old university town is full of traditions of his prowess in duels and
drinking bouts, and of his difficulties with the authorities. In 1835 he
passed the State examination in law, and was occupied for three years,
first in the judicial and then in the administrative service of the
State, at Berlin, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Potsdam. In 1838 he left the
governmental service and studied agriculture at the Eldena Academy. From
his twenty-fourth to his thirty-sixth year (1839-51) his life was that
of a country squire. He took charge at first of property held by his
father in Pomerania; upon his father's death in 1845 he assumed the
management of the family estate of Schoenhausen. Here he held the local
offices of captain of dikes and of deputy in the provincial Diet. The
latter position proved a stepping-stone into Prussian and German
politics; for when Frederick William IV. summoned the "United Diet" of
the kingdom (1847), Bismarck was sent to Berlin as an alternate delegate
from his province.

The next three years were full of events. The revolution of 1848 forced
all the German sovereigns who had thus far retained absolute power,
among them the King of Prussia, to grant representative constitutions to
their people. The same year witnessed the initiation of a great popular
movement for the unification of Germany. A national Parliament was
assembled at Frankfort, and in 1849 it offered to the King of Prussia
the German imperial crown; but the constitution it had drafted was so
democratic, and the opposition of the German princes so great, that
Frederick William felt obliged to refuse the offer. An attempt was then
made, at a Parliament held in Erfurt, to establish a "narrower Germany"
under Prussian leadership; but this movement also came to nothing. The
Austrian government, paralyzed for a time by revo