Count Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen (9 March 1901 – 14 September 1949) was a German politician and German Resistance figure.

Biography

Born in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, Bismarck was a grandson of the 19th century

Chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of ...

. He was a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

and in 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag as a Nazi member. In 1935 he became chairman of the regional council ( Regierungspräsident) for

Stettin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...

, and later also for

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of ...

. In 1937 he married a cousin, Countess Melanie

Hoyos Hoyos is a municipality located in the province of Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain. According to the 2005 census (INE), the municipality has a population of 988 inhabitants. It is the administrative capital of the Sierra de Gata. History It was ...

, in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. From 1942, however, Bismarck had been opposed to the continuation of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, and had made contact with other members of the German aristocracy who were working against the Nazi regime – such as the Berlin police chief

Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf Wolf-Heinrich Julius Otto Bernhard Fritz Hermann Ferdinand Graf von Helldorff (14 October 1896 – 15 August 1944) was an SA-''Obergruppenführer'', German police official and politician. He served as a member of the Landtag of Prussia during th ...

, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg, and General Friedrich Olbricht – with the aim of starting negotiations with the western Allies. He was aware of preparations for the

20 July plot On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The ...

to assassinate

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

, but was not directly involved in it. After the failure of the plot, Bismarck's connections to the plotters were discovered. He was expelled from the SS and from the Reichstag. Because of his famous name and many powerful connections, however, he escaped the fate of most of the active plotters. He was not arrested until August and he was not tortured. In October he was acquitted of the charges against him by the People's Court, but was nevertheless sent to

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...

, where he was relatively well treated. He was liberated by Soviet forces in April 1945. In September 1949 Bismarck and his wife were killed in a car accident in Verden an der Aller near

Bremen Bremen ( Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state cons ...

, in the American Occupation Zone.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bismarck-Schonhausen, Gottfried Graf von 1901 births 1949 deaths Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen Members of the 20 July plot Nazi Party politicians Counts of Germany Politicians from Berlin People from the Province of Brandenburg Road incident deaths in Germany SS-Brigadeführer Sachsenhausen concentration camp survivors Members of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany Nobility in the Nazi Party