" (Showalter, Bismarck 1).
After his resignation, Bismarck had a personal crisis. He drank way too much and would gamble without a thought to his finances. For a while, Bismarck was known as a "wild man" (1) because of his outrageous social behavior. Ulcers, shingles, and insomnia were developed because of his outrageous and stressful life-style. Bismarck also experienced a religious crisis as well. He didn't associate himself with any religions for a nearly a decade.
In 1847, Bismarck overcame his personal and religious crisis after marrying his wife Joganna von Putkammer. Bismarck stopped his heavy drinking and reckless gambling for love of his wife. (Kimmich 13) Bismarck also converted to Pietist Lutherism, which stressed a close personal relationship with God. As a result he developed a keen "sense of self-dicipline" (Showalter, Bismarck 2) which had been absent before. Bismarck's relationship with his wife was a loving one and lasted until his death in 1898.
Soon after Bismarck's marriage, he was elected into the Vereinigter Landtag which started Bismarck's political career. A year later, Bismarck believed the Prussian king and the articratic landowners a God-given system of government. Bismarck also believed that the system of government should be preserved. Bismarck shunned liberal, socialist, and democratic tendencies as "subversive of civic duty and discipline." (Kimmich 14).
In 1851, Bismarck was appointed as a Prussian delegate to the Diet of German Confederation at Frankfurt. Giving him insight into German and European politics, (14) Bismarck worked with delegates of the forty-seven states of the German Confederations. Bismarck soon discovered that Prussian and Austrian interests would often conflict each other.
