Ferdinand von Bismarck

Ferdinand Herbord Ivar, Prince von Bismarck (German: Ferdinand Herbord Ivar Fürst von Bismarck; born November 22, 1930 in London) 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:

• Carl-Eduard von Bismarck (16 February 1961), was briefly a Member of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament;
• Gottfried von Bismarck (1962–2007);
• Gregor von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1964).
• Vanessa von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1971). Vanessa graduated from the London School of Economics and runs a public relations firm in New York.

Bismarck had the nominal title of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen from his birth until the death of his father in 1975, when he succeeded to the title of Prince.

He became a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany when he was thirty years old and was chairman of the local party in Aumühle. He is a member of the board of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation and is patron of the Bismarckbund and the Bismarck Order, as well as chairman of the Duchy of Lauenburg Foundation.

• Anmerkungen eines Patrioten ("Observations of a Patriot"), 1998
• Setzen wir Deutschland wieder in den Sattel ("Germany back in the Saddle"), 2004