Otto von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck was a German statesman and diplomat who led the unification of Germany and became its first chancellor, serving from 1871 to 1890. His approach, known as Realpolitik, and his strong-handed rule earned him the nickname "Iron Chancellor." Born into a Junker landowning family, he quickly advanced in Prussian politics under King Wilhelm I, holding the posts of minister president and foreign minister of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, and later chancellor of the German Empire.

Bismarck was born on 1 April 1815 at Schönhausen, a family estate west of Berlin in Prussian Saxony. His father, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck, was a Junker estate owner and former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Luise Mencken, was the educated daughter of a senior Berlin government official. In 1816, the family moved to their Pomeranian estate at Kniephof (now in Poland), where Bismarck spent a rural childhood. Despite their land, the family's finances were modest—his father's poor farming skills reduced their income, and Bismarck never gained significant wealth before unification. He had an older brother, Bernhard, and a younger sister, Malwine. Though he cultivated the image of a rough Junker by wearing military uniforms, Bismarck was well educated, cosmopolitan, and fluent in English, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian.

He attended Johann Ernst Plamann's elementary school, then the Friedrich-Wilhelm and Graues Kloster secondary schools. From 1832 to 1833, he studied law at the University of Göttingen, where he joined the Corps Hannovera, and later at the University of Berlin from 1833 to 1835. In 1838, while serving as an army reservist in Greifswald, he studied agriculture at the University of Greifswald. At Göttingen, he befriended American student John Lothrop Motley, who later became a historian and diplomat. Motley wrote a novel in 1839, *Morton's Hope*, describing Bismarck as reckless, dashing, eccentric, but also gifted and charming.

Bismarck initially aimed for a diplomatic career and trained as a lawyer in Aachen and Potsdam, but soon resigned after taking unauthorized leave to pursue two English women—Laura Russell and Isabella Loraine-Smith—which jeopardized his career. In 1838, he completed a shortened compulsory military service in the Prussian Army, serving as a one-year volunteer and later an officer in the Landwehr reserve. After