02045cam a2200241Ia 4500 CY-PaNEU 20211026111943.0 a|||||r||||||||||| 211026t2011 enkabf b 001 0 eng d 9780199975396 YDXCP eng YDXCP BTCTA OCLCQ BDX FNP TXM ILM OCLCQ OCLCO OCLCF ASC CY-PaNEU AACR2 DD218 .S74 2011 Steinberg, Jonathan. 14108 Bismarck : a life / Jonathan Steinberg. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011. x, 577 p. : ill. , maps ; 21 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 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. Bismarck, Otto, Fürst von, 1815-1898. Statesmen Germany Biography. 14109 Germany Politics and government 1871-1888. 14110 BK 6631 6631 0 0 lcc 0 0 mat CY-PaNEU CY-PaNEU 2021-10-26 0 DD218 .S74 2011 3011414 2021-10-26 00:00:00 2021-10-26 BK