II.

Early Life

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, north-west of Berlin. His father was an East Elbian landowner who could trace his noble ancestry back five centuries. His mother was from the middle class, a descendant of academicians and civil servants. Marriages like theirs were increasingly common in the 19th century as the educated middle classes and the old aristocracy began fusing into a new elite.

Bismarck was educated at a gymnasium, or high school, in Berlin, but was little affected by the experience. Neither music nor literature, science nor mathematics, influenced the formation of his mind. He entered the University of Göttingen in 1832 with the goal of passing, with as little effort as possible, the law examinations required for a civil service appointment. He spent a minimal amount of time in formal study at both Göttingen and Berlin, where he transferred in 1834. Nevertheless, he passed his examinations and received an appointment as an apprentice official. He found, however, the routines of Prussia’s bureaucracy boring enough that he resigned in 1838. He declared in a letter to his sister that he wanted to conduct the orchestra, not play in it.

From that point until 1847, Bismarck lived a rather dissolute life. He drank heavily and gambled recklessly. His social behaviour was so outrageous that he was known as “wild man”. He developed a series of stress-related illnesses: shingles, ulcers, insomnia. Then, in 1847, his life changed: he married, underwent a religious conversion, and began his political career. Bismarck’s wife, Johanna von Putkammer, provided him with a stable and supportive home life. Pietist Lutheranism, with its emphasis on the direct relationship between man and God, helped him develop a self-discipline that had been absent. And in the Prussian legislature, summoned in 1847 by King Frederick William IV, he found a forum in which he could develop his ideas on the nature of the state and the role of government.