Schoenhausen was a dreary place indeed; while the Bismarcks were better off than their neighbors, still the times were out of joint and ruin fell over the broad acres.
¶ Then came an unexpected change. Along about 1816, Karl inherited Kneiphof, Kuelz and Jarchelin estates from his cousin, moved to Kneiphof, just east of the hamlet of Naugard.
The house was exceeding modest; a brook, the Zampel, ran near by; and there was a carp pond. Karl was fond of hunting in the old beech forest. Such were the unsettled conditions in the Bismarck family, up to Otto’s sixth year.
9
Soft-hearted Karl and Spartan Mother Louise; her rigid character, its good and its bad side; her extreme punctilio and her pistol-shooting, to steady her sight.
¶ Otto von Bismarck inherited his tall form from his father, Karl William. This unusual type of cavalry captain subscribed for French journals and ate off silver plate. Karl’s regiment was known as the “White and Blue,” and one of his duties was to get up at 4 in the morning and measure corn for horses. At one time the captain lived in Berlin, but he soon tired of the capital and gladly returned to the country where he passed his days as squire. To the end of his life, he was fond of horseback riding and hunting; and he brought his sons up to ride like centaurs.
¶ Bismarck’s mother, Louise Wilhelmina Mencken, married at the age of sixteen; her husband Karl was nineteen years her senior.
¶ In the family circle, the father was known as the heart, the mother as the brains; but in Louise’s case it might well read “ambition.” She wished to see Otto von Bismarck, her youngest son, become a diplomatist—a judgment that in the light of after years seems almost uncanny.
Later, at the full tide of the Chancellor’s great glory, frequently his earliest friends used to say, “Bismarck, had your mother only survived to see this day!”