Obituaries
Obituary: Count Gottfried von Bismarck
The public may be willing to forgive us for mistakes in
judgment but it will not forgive us for mistakes in motive.
- Robert W Haack
Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday
aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a
pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a
reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto,
Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young
von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic
life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns
from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the
severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.
When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he
cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes,
set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings.
This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of
friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of
them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and
Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers
Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.
Perhaps unsurprisingly he managed only a Third in Politics,
Philosophy and Economics.
Von Bismarck's university career ended in catastrophe in
June 1986, when his friend Olivia Channon was found dead on his bed, the victim
of a drink and drugs overdose. Von
Bismarck admitted that his role in the affair had brought disgrace on the
family name; 5 years later he told friends that there were still people who
would not speak to his parents on account of it, and who told his mother that
she had "a rotten son".
In the reunified Germany, von Bismarck managed several
telecoms businesses and, armed with a doctoral thesis on the East German
telephone system, oversaw the sale of companies formerly owned by Communist
East Germany to the private sector. By
the late 1990s von Bismarck was working for Telemonde, Kevin Maxwell's troubled
telecoms firm based in America, with responsibility for developing the business
in Germany; the company collapsed in 2002 with debts of £105 million. Von Bismarck eventually returned to London,
where he became chairman of the investment company AIM Partners, dabbled in
film production and promoted holidays to Uzbekistan.
Never concealing his homosexuality, von Bismarck continued
to appear in public in various eccentric items of attire, including tall hats
atop his bald Mekon-like head. At
parties he would appear in exotic designer frock coats with matching trousers
and emblazoned with enormous logos.
Flitting from table to table at fashionable London nightclubs, he was
said to be as comfortable among wealthy Eurotrash as he was on formal occasions
calling for black tie.
Although described
personally as quiet and impeccably mannered, von Bismarck continued to live
high on the hog, hosting riotous all-night parties for his (chiefly gay)
friends at his £5 million flat off Sloane Square. It was at one such event, in August last
year, that von Bismarck encountered tragedy for a second time when one of his
male guests fell 60 ft to his death from the roof garden. While von Bismarck was not arrested, he was
questioned as a witness and there were those who wondered - not, perhaps,
without cause - whether he might be the victim of a family curse.
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His removal from Oxford was so abrupt that he was not given
time to settle his bills; Prince Ferdinand sent a servant who did the rounds of
von Bismarck's favoured watering-holes, restaurants and his tailor bearing a
chequebook. The tabloids quoted words of
repentance from von Bismarck himself - "My days of living it up are all
over. This past week has just been too
much" - but although he was reported to be leaving to finish his studies
at a German university and eventually to enter German politics, in the event he
was treated again for alcoholism at a German clinic. He returned briefly to Oxford, where local
magistrates fined him £80 for drug possession; he wiped away tears as his
lawyer offered mitigation, pointing out that since the Channon affair von
Bismarck had received a bad press in Germany.
Doubting whether he would be able to find work in his own
country, von Bismarck was said to be planning to study at a university in Los
Angeles while continuing to receive treatment for his drink problem. Olivia Channon's death, his barrister said,
would prove to be a shadow over von Bismarck's head "probably for the rest
of his life". So it proved.
He never married.
