Otto von Bismarck

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1815–1898 ○ Natural causes

Prussian minister president who provoked the war of 1870 with the Ems dispatch and became first chancellor of the German Empire

Born into a Junker family at Schönhausen, he was Prussia's envoy to the Frankfurt Diet and ambassador to Russia and France before Wilhelm I made him minister president in 1862 to force the army reforms through the Landtag. Minister president and foreign minister until 1890, he led three short wars against Denmark, Austria and France, founded the North German Confederation in 1866 and in 1870 published the edited Ems dispatch that drew France into declaring war. In 1871 he had Wilhelm I proclaimed emperor at Versailles and became the empire's first chancellor. He fought the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf, suppressed the Social Democrats with the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878 and introduced social insurance to undercut them, while his alliances isolated France. Dismissed at Wilhelm II's insistence in 1890, he died at Friedrichsruh in 1898.

Also known as: Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck · Prince Bismarck · Fürst von Bismarck · Iron Chancellor