3612 x 5433 px | 30,6 x 46 cm | 12 x 18,1 inches | 300dpi
Lieu:
Museum
Informations supplémentaires:
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, born Otto Eduard Leopold of Bismarck-Schönhausen (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), was a Prussian and German statesman of the 19th century, born to a wealthy family. As Minister-President of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, he engineered the Unification of Germany. From 1867 on, he was Chancellor of the North German Confederation. When the 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 1870–1871, saw Prussia break France's power on the European continent. Bismarck was very much successful in creating a unified German nation, but was less successful in creating nationalism for Germany rather than for the individual states. His attempts to eliminate the political and cultural strength of the Roman Catholic Church within Germany — the so-called Kulturkampf — was only partially successful and soon reversed, to the relief of the Catholic Church of Germany. His similar struggle against Social Democrats (Sozialistengesetze) was unsuccessful, although under his governance Germany enacted what was at the time progressive social legislation. From 1862 to 1888 Bismarck served at the pleasure of King (later Emperor) Wilhelm I, with whom he shared a similar outlook and enjoyed a cordial relationship.
