Otto von Bismarck 1815-1898

Diplomat, warmonger, founder of the German Empire - The first chancellor and the emergence of the German nation state 1815-1898 He is probably the most important statesman in recent German history - and one of the most controversial: Otto von Bismarck, that arch-conservative Prussian who forged the German nation state in 1871. Bismarck was a man full of contradictions: A socialist-hater who created the world's most advanced social insurances to protect workers, a warmonger who instigated three bloody conflicts but then declared peace in Europe the most important goal of his foreign policy, a Junker who always longed for the simple country life, but during whose tenure Germany developed from a poor agrarian state into the land of railways and blast furnaces, telegraph lines and electric street lighting. In its new 172-page edition, GEO EPOCHE describes the life and times of the nobleman from Old Mark Brandenburg, who was born in 1815. It tells of Bismarck's attempt to save Prussia's king from the revolution of 1848 with a handful of peasants, which failed miserably. Recounts how the failed counter-revolutionary nevertheless succeeded in rising to the position of Prussian prime minister in a state crisis in 1862 and founding the German Empire. Describes Bismarck's foreign policy and his struggle against the Social Democrats. Documents the bitter journalistic campaign of the Chancellor, who was dismissed in 1890, against his successors. And finally draws a balance of his controversial work.