Bismarck : a life

Summary:Otto von Bismarck transformed Europe more completely than anybody in the nineteenth century, except for Napoleon. He unified, and indeed, created, the country at the center of two world wars that would transform the world. This biography illuminates the life of the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. The author draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malignant genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them

Edition:View all formats and editions

Genre:Biography

Physical Description:x, 577 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

ISBN:

9780199782529, 9780199599011, 9780199975396, 0199782520, 0199599017, 0199975396

OCLC Number / Unique Identifier:663438587

Subjects:

1871-1888

Allemagne Politique et gouvernement 1871-1888

Biografieën (vorm)

Biographie

Biographies