Otto Von Bismarck was a conservative Prussian monarchist who established the unification of Germany after several wars between German states in the 1860's. The German Empire rose to be a European powerhouse under Prussian leadership, under Otto Von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia. Otto Von Bismarck was born April 1st 1815 in Schönhausen, Germany to father Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck an aristocratic junker estate owner and former Prussian military officer and to well educated mother Wilhelmine Luise Mencken, daughter of a senior government official in Berlin. (BBC History, 2015).
In 1862 King Wilhem I named Bismarck as Prime Minister of Prussia and later as the first Imperial Chancellor (Reichskanzler) of the German Empire. "As chancellor of the new Germany, Bismarck concentrated on building a powerful state with a unified national identity." (BBC History 2015) Bismarck allied himself with the liberals, the anti-catholics and targeted the Catholic Church to a cultural war because he believed the church had too much influence, especially in the south of Germany. He also worked to prevent socialism in Germany by introducing health insurance and pensions. Germany became the first welfare state.
"Bismarck was truly a monumental historical figure who dominated in his era both domestically and internationally" (Manzi, 2015). Ritter believes that it was the dismissal of Bismarck when things went down hill. "The result was the fateful turn of German foreign policy, and the steady loss of the principle that the military should only be an instrument of the leading statesmen" (Iggers, 1968 The German Conception of History p. 256). "Historians such as Walter Bussmann, Hans Rothfels, Werner Conze and others, still believe that Bismarck's solution of the German Problem was the only one which had been possible within the concrete settings of the time, and that the German state he created was essentially a sound one.
