The Life of Bismarck
Private and Political With Descriptive Notices of His Ancestry
9781465625274
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In the Alt Mark, belonging to the circle of Stendal, lies the small town of Bismarck on the Biese. It is an old and famous place, for south of the town stands an ancient tower, known as the Bismarck Louse. Tradition states that the tower received its name from a gigantic louse which inhabited it, and that the peasants of the district had every day to provide huge quantities of meat for the monster’s food. In this legend we can trace the popular spirit of the sober Alt Mark—it laughs at the pilgrimages which were made in the thirteenth century to Bismarck in honor of a holy cross, said to have fallen from heaven. These pilgrimages, at first greatly encouraged by the lords of the soil, as they found in them a rich source of income, soon came to a sanguinary end, from the severe strife occasioned by these very revenues. Bismarck does not, as some assert, derive its name from the Biese, because in the year 1203, when it is first mentioned in the records, it is called Biscopesmarck, or Bishopsmark, afterwards corrupted into Bismarck. It belonged to the Bishops of Havelberg, who erected a fort here as a defense of their Mark, on the frontiers of the Sprengels of Halberstadt. From the little town the noble family of Bismarck has its name. It is a tradition of later times, by no means historically confirmed, that the Bismarcks were a noble family of Bohemia, settled by Charlemagne in the Alt Mark, and the founders of the town of Bismarck, which received its name from them. It is further erroneously asserted, that the Bismarcks, after the decease of the very powerful Count von Osterburg, had shared the county with the family of Alvensleben; and thus the town of Bismarck passed into the possession of the Alvenslebens.[2] This last is only stated to account for the circumstance of the holding of Bismarck in the fourteenth century as a fief by the Alvenslebens; it being forgotten that in those days the title went with the office, and that a county could not therefore be in the possession of two families. As groundless is the tradition of the Wendic descent of the Bismarcks. According to this, the actual name of this noble family should be Bij-smarku, in Wendic, “Beware of the Christ-thorn.” Not very happily has the double trefoil in the arms of the Bismarcks been identified with the Christ-thorn—as a proof of their Wendic descent. The Bismarcks are rather, as are all the families of knightly rank in the Alt Mark, the descendants of German warriors who, under the Guelph, the Ascanian, or other princes, had conquered the Slavic lands on both banks of the Elbe for Christianity and German civilization, and had then settled themselves on those lands as fief-holders. The Bismarcks belonged to the warrior family of Biscopesmarck-Bishopsmark-Bismarck, and when surnames came into use, called themselves after their dwelling-place—von Bismarck. Of course, they retained the name after the loss or cession of their original seat. Like many other knightly families of the Alt Mark, the Bismarcks gradually spread towards the East, conquering greater space for German Christian culture, subduing the Wends or driving them back towards the Oder. Thus the Bismarcks also appear, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, as warrior knights in Priegnitz and the region of Ruppin.
