Otto Prince von Bismarck

The title of this article is ambiguous. For his grandfather of the same name, the first Chancellor of the German Empire, see Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898).

Otto Prince von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck at his wedding

Otto Christian Archibald Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen , from 1904 Prince von Bismarck (born September 25, 1897 in Schönhausen , † December 24, 1975 in Friedrichsruh ) was a German politician ( DNVP , NSDAP , later CDU ) and diplomat .

Life and work

Bismarck was the son of Herbert Fürst von Bismarck , who died when Otto was six years old, and the grandson of the former Chancellor Otto von Bismarck . His mother was Countess Marguerite Hoyos . After graduating from high school in 1915, he studied law in Berlin and Kiel , where he also completed his legal clerkship . His training was interrupted by military service in 1917/18. From 1921 to 1923 he was the “Erbhofbauer” in Friedrichsruh, as well as the owner of Schönhausen . In 1927 he joined the Foreign Service. The assignments in Stockholm (until 1928) and London followed the activity as conductor of the Political Department in the Foreign Office from 1937 to 1940. In 1935 he became a member of the Anglo-German-Fellowship . He worked as an envoy at the German Embassy at the Quirinal in Rome until August 1943. From November 1943 to November 1944, Bismarck was head of the Italy Committee in the Foreign Office. Then he managed the family property Friedrichsruh again.

Political commitment

In the Weimar Republic , von Bismarck was a member of the DNVP from 1919 to 1931. From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the Reichstag . As early as the turn of 1932/33, he expected Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor to have greater advantages for his personal career. In May 1933 he joined the NSDAP . In 1952 he held talks with Friedrich Middelhauve about joining the FDP , in which he was offered a candidate for the Bundestag. Finally, however, he decided to become a member of the CDU. From 1953 to 1965 he was a directly elected member of the constituency of the Duchy of Lauenburg, a member of the German Bundestag , where he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee , the Committee for All-German and Berlin Issues, and the Committee for Nuclear Issues. Bismarck was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , of which he was Vice President from 1959 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1966. From 1957 to 1961 he was also chairman of the German Parliamentary Society . In 1965 he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit.

The National Socialist war criminal Richard Baer was arrested on the Bismarcks estate in the Sachsenwald in 1960 after a 15-year stay. The employer made no statement on this.

family

Bismarck married Ann-Mari Tengbom from Sweden on April 18, 1928 in Berlin (* 1907 in Stockholm; † 1999 in Marbella). From this marriage six children, including the former head of the stem Princely House Bismarck , Ferdinand , and from the jet-set scene known Gunilla . Bismarck's grandson Carl-Eduard von Bismarck was also a member of the Bundestag from 2005 to 2007. Since Bismarck received the title “Prince” through the early death of his father before the end of the monarchy and the abolition of the nobility, he was able to use this primogeneity title as a civil-legal part of his name, but not pass it on to his children.

Bismarck's heirs still had to argue in court about compensation payments for the Schönhausen manor, which was expropriated in the course of the land reform . The Magdeburg Administrative Court initially confirmed the rejection because, as deputy of the German ambassador in Rome, from 1940 onwards, Bismarck had been a major contributor to National Socialism. The Federal Administrative Court overturned this decision and pointed out that Bismarck had warned Italy of the German intentions with regard to Croatian Jews to be extradited and thus contributed to their non-extradition and that Bismarck's behavior during the period from joining the NSDAP until he left the active diplomatic service Service at the end of 1944 would require an overall assessment. At the end of March 2011, the Magdeburg Administrative Court obliged the authorities to grant compensation, because Bismarck was not to be blamed for anything more than being a "follower" during the Nazi era. This is disputed, however, because Bismarck "apparently" knew of the extermination of the Jews as early as 1942 and yet did not resign from his office, in which he also had to demand the extradition of Jewish refugees to Germany.

literature

• Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 39f.
• Jobst etiquette : a diplomat's dilemma. Otto II von Bismarck in Rome 1940-1943. Humboldt University Berlin, 2006. ( full text )
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
• Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 222). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , pp. 45–46.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jobst Knigge : Bismarck in Italy (PDF; 307 kB)
2. ↑ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 67, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2nd update. Ed., Frankfurt 2005, p. 51.
4. ^ Ddp Deutscher Depeschendienst GmbH: Bismarck heirs will not be compensated from November 10, 2008, accessed on November 11, 2008
5. ^ Judgment of September 18, 2009 - 5 C 1.09 -
6. ↑ Judgment of March 29, 2011 - 5 A 6/11 -
7. ^ Susan Zuccotti : Under his very windows: the Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy . New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 116

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Fürst von Bismarck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Otto Fürst von Bismarck in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Otto Fürst von Bismarck in the database of members of the Reichstag