Bismarck information

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, 1st Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen, 1st Herzog von Lauenburg, 1st Fürst von Bismarck (* April 1, 1815 in Schönhausen, today Saxony-Anhalt ; † July 30, 1898 in Friedrichsruh near Hamburg), was a Prussian and German statesman of the 19th century. As Minister-President of Prussia from 1862-90, he engineered the unification of Germany. From 1867 on, he was Chancellor of the North German Confederation. When the second German Empire was declared in 1871, he served as its first Chancellor, gaining the nickname "Iron Chancellor".
Bismarck held conservative monarchical views in the tradition of Clemens von Metternich, the Austrian statesman who devised the diplomatic arrangements which governed Europe after the Napoleonic Wars - arrangements which Bismarck upset. Bismarck's primary objectives were to ensure the supremacy of the Prussian state within Central Europe, and of the aristocracy within the state itself. His most significant achievement was the creation of the modern German state, with Prussia at its core, through a series of wars and political maneuvering in the 1860s. The final act, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, saw Prussia break France's power on the European continent. (...) more....

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