Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck

Who was Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck?

Otto Christian Archibald, Prince von Bismarck was a German politician and diplomat, and the Prince of Bismarck from 1904 to his death.

He was the eldest of the three sons of Herbert von Bismarck, as well as the grandson of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and elder brother of Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen. A lawyer, he became the owner of the family estate in Schönhausen and joined the diplomatic service in 1927, serving in Stockholm, London, with the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, as Envoy to Rome, and finally as head of the Italian section of the Foreign Ministry.

In August 1942, Bismarck was directed to request that Italy turn over Jewish refugees in Italian-occupied Croatia for deportation to the East. He disclosed to the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano that the goal was the "dispersion and elimination" of these Jews.

He was a member of the DNVP in the Weimar Republic, and served as a Member of Parliament from 1924 to 1928. In 1933 he joined the Nazi Party and in 1935 he became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. In the 1950s he considered becoming a member of the FDP, which offered him a nomination for Parliament, but eventually joined the conservative CDU instead. He served as a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Herzogtum Lauenburg from 1953 to 1965, and as a member of the foreign affairs committee. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and served as its Vice President from 1959 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1966. He was also chairman of the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft from 1957 to 1961. He received the Great Cross of Merit in 1965.