Otto von Bismarck

"Politics is the art of the possible."

Otto von Bismarck, in full Otto Eduard Leopold, Fürst (prince) von Bismarck, Graf (count) von Bismarck-Schönhausen, Herzog (duke) von Lauenburg (born April 1, 1815, Schönhausen, Altmark, Prussia Germany—died July 30, 1898, Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg) was the prime minister of Prussia (1862–73, 1873–90) and founder and first chancellor (1871–90) of the German Empire. Once the empire was established, he actively and skillfully pursued pacific policies in foreign affairs, succeeding in preserving the peace in Europe for about two decades.

Welfare state in Germany

The first system of compulsory state health insurance and old age pensions was introduced in Germany. The aim of Bismarck's social insurance legislation, as he himself put it in 1880, was ‘to engender in the great mass of the unpropertied the conservative state of mind that springs from the feeling of entitlement to a pension.’ In Bismarck’s view, ‘A man who has a pension for his old age is . . . much easier to deal with than a man without that prospect.’ To the surprise of his liberal opponents, Bismarck openly acknowledged that this was ‘a state-socialist idea! The generality must undertake to assist the unpropertied.’ But his motives were far from altruistic. ‘Whoever embraces this idea’, he observed, ‘will come to power.’

Links

• "Bye-bye Bismarck" by Antony P. Mueller, July 2003
• "Lincoln and Bismarck: Enemies of Liberalism" by Adam Young, August 2002
• "Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century" by Ralph Raico, April 2005
• Otto von Bismarck at Wikipedia