Ferdinand von Bismarck

Who is Ferdinand von Bismarck?

Ferdinand Herbord Ivar, Prince of Bismarck is a German landowner and lawyer and the Prince of Bismarck since 1975.

The son of politician and diplomat Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck and great-grandson of statesman Otto von Bismarck, the founder of modern Germany, he grew up in London, Rome and Sweden, and was educated at the Schule Schloss Salem boarding school. After a few years in Brazil in the early 1950s, where he worked for the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, he went on to study law, earning a law degree in 1956. He worked for the European Commission in Brussels for some years, and has since 1967 worked as an attorney in Hamburg, based from his home in Friedrichsruh. He has also managed his family's estate.

Bismarck married the Belgian countess Elisabeth Lippens in 1960. They have four children: one son, Carl-Eduard von Bismarck, was briefly a Member of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament; another son was Count Gottfried von Bismarck; Their third son, Gregor von Bismarck-Schönhausen, was born in 1964 and a daughter, Vanessa von Bismarck-Schönhausen, in 1971.