Background and career
| Styles of The Prince of Bismarck | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Reference style | His Serene Highness |
| Spoken style | Your Serene Highness |
He was born in London, the son of politician and diplomat Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck and Swedish socialite Ann-Mari Tengbom. He was a grandson of statesman Herbert von Bismarck, a great-grandson of statesman Otto von Bismarck,[1] and the maternal grandson of the prominent Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom.
He grew up in London and Rome where his father worked as a diplomat. When his father was released from the foreign service because of his contacts with the resistance group in November 1944, Ferdinand was sent to Sweden and did not return to Germany until 1947. He was then 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 after 1967 worked as an attorney in Hamburg, based from his home in Friedrichsruh, the estate granted to his grandfather by Emperor William I. Bismarck was a member of the board of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation and was patron of the Bismarckbund and the Bismarck Order, as well as chairman of the Duchy of Lauenburg Foundation.[citation needed]
He managed his family's estate there, including the Sachsenwald, a forest of 6,000 hectares near Hamburg. He sold parts of the forest as building land, like his father had done, and purchased farm land in Uruguay which he later sold. He also invested in Marbella, Spain, where he was a notable member of the Marbella Club. He founded the „Marbella Hill Club“, a settlement of luxurious villas, and also acquired the „Park Palace“, a huge tenement building in Monte Carlo. From 1989, he sold 2,250 hectares of the Sachsenwald to the shipowner Eberhart von Rantzau, owner of the Deutsche Afrika-Linien, retaining 4,500 hectares to his own.[2] Bismarck died in a hospital in Reinbek, at the age of 88.[3]
