Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE JUNKER POLITICIAN § 1. Education and Entry into Politics Otto Eduard Leopold Von Bismarck-schonhausen, born on April 1, 1815, in the feverish month of renewed war that followed Napoleon's escape from Elba, was the third son of Ferdinand von Bismarck and Wilhelmina Mencken. Of his two elder brothers only one, Bernhard (born 1810), survived, and a third brother (born 1819) did not reach manhood. Of his sisters only one, Malwine (born 1827), reached womanhood. Schonhausen, the ancestral home of his forefathers, lies to the west of Berlin in the Old March (Alt Mark) of Brandenburg, which was the original nucleus of the Electorate and the very core of the future Prussian kingdom and the cradle of the Prussian monarchy. 'Who are these Hohenzollerns? ' Bismarck once demanded. ' We were in the March long before they were.' The claim that the Bismarcks settled in the March in the reign of Charles the Great rests only on the pious authority of the genealogical table hanging in the hall of the manor-house at Schonhausen; but two hundred years before the first Hohenzollern, invested with the Electorate by Imperial hands, set to work to tame the lawless independence of noble and Junker in the March, the petty village of Bismarck gave its name to a Brandenburg family; and towards the end of the thirteenth century the Bismarcks were established in the guild and government of Stendal, a township hard by. In 1345, as holders of the fief of Burgstall, they were definitely registered in the nobility of the March, and though they never reached the status of the great aristocracy, theywere henceforward one of the many noble families who constituted the governing class. In 1562 they were reluctantly obliged to transfer Burgstall to the Hohen- zollerns and to take in exchange Sc... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.