IN THIS new biography of the creator of the modern unified German state, Jonathan Steinberg finds a great many contradictory things to say about his subject. Otto von Bismarck was â??a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of Protestantism, who secularised schools and introduced civil divorceâ?. He was a brilliant writer yet his letters and his memoirs cannot be trusted because he started to tell lies to his mother at a young age and never stopped doing so. He was neurotic, vindictive and insensitive as well as charming, charismatic and full of warmth.
Mr Steinberg, a professor of modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by Bismarckâ??s complex personality. He started writing about him because he wanted to understand how his hero led three wars and unified Germany without commanding a single soldier, without a big political party backing him, without any experience in government before his nomination as minister-president of Prussia in 1862 and without great oratorical skills.
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