In times relatively more modern, the House of Bismarck presents, like many a noble country family of Brandenburg, an unbroken succession of modest and faithful servants of the state, some soldiers, some employed in civil duties. The eighteenth century offers us two rather more curious specimens, the grandfather and great uncle of the chancellor. One was surnamed the _poet_, the other the _adventurer_. The _poet_, this painful avowal must be made, composed his verses in the French language. We have notably by him an "_Eloge ou Monument érigé à la Mémoire de Christine de Bismarck, née de Schoenfeld, par Charles-Alexandre de Bismarck_," Berlin, 1774. It was to his dead wife that the retired captain of cavalry thought necessary to elevate this mausoleum of words and of _Welche_ rhymes, full of the insipid sentimentality of the time. The _adventurer_ (Ludolf-August) is more deserving of his name. He killed his servant in a fit of anger or drunkenness, was pardoned, took service in Russia, became involved in political intrigues in Courland, and was forced to go to Siberia in exile. Pardoned again, he entered into Russian diplomacy, filled several missions, and died commanding general at Poltava. Let us say in passing, that this Ludolf was not the only one of his family to serve under the Russian flag, and thus the name of Bismarck has long been well known at St. Petersburg.
The whig biographers lay much stress on the fact, that the mother of the young Otto, "an intelligent, ambitious, and rather cold woman," was a _bourgeoise_, a Miss Menken, of a family of _savans_ well known at Leipsic. They love to prove in this manner that the restorer of the empire was connected by his mother with the _bourgeoisie_, that studious and cultivated _bourgeoisie_ which is the great strength of Germany,--while claiming his right to the nobility and the army by his father, retired captain of cavalry, and by his grandfather the _poet_. Those profound Germans have a weakness, it is known, for all symbolism. They dignify very often with this name that which is nothing but a _jeu d'esprit_, in reality a play of words, and it is thus that they attach a certain signification to the futile circumstance that the young Otto was confirmed[12] at Berlin at the hands of Schleiermacher, the celebrated Doctor of Divinity, whose learning was much more respectable than his life; "in a manner and for a fleeting moment, it is true, but solemnly, the young man called to a life of action _par excellence_, was brought in contact with our learned theology and our romantic philosophy." Nor has it been forgotten to exalt the name of the "gray cloister" (_Grauer Kloster_), which the lyceum at Berlin bore, where the future destroyer of convents studied, or to note the French origin of one of his principal professors, Doctor Bonnet, descendant of a Huguenot family which sought refuge in Brandenburg in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.