The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political. George Hesekiel
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association with a charming, joyous, tender, intelligent, and virtuous woman? Exclusively to love! exclusively to be beloved!
“Nature had endowed my friend with beauties of person and mind, by which she could not fail to please. The first would immediately fascinate the eye, the second preserved that fascination forever. Perhaps I ought only to dwell upon the last as the fountains of her virtues. But it would be ungrateful to be silent respecting the once visible half of the charming whole, by which alone we learn to know the other invisible portion, causing virtuous thoughts to grow into virtuous deeds, and without which I can not even realize any picture of my beloved friend. She was of noble form, pleasant and well formed. Her expression was exactly equivalent to its necessary power of pleasing. Her hair of dark yellow tint. Her forehead was prominent, which she herself regretted, but which made her more beautiful in the eyes of others. Her brow never betrayed pride or passion. Her eyes were bluish-gray—their expression was attentive and watchful, but joyous. Her heart was light, mild, and ever open, and ever performed what her eye promised. Her nose was very handsome, somewhat high in the centre, but not to the extent visible in ambitious or passionate women. Her cheeks were breathed upon by the happy bloom of health, and the still more lovely blush of shame readily rose. Her mouth, which never gave an untrue kiss, which never uttered a word of vanity, of slander, or of lust, displayed handsome, well-arranged teeth, and balmy lips. The gentle smile of this mouth, the seat of innocence, how soon, alas! was it to pass away! The outlines of the lower part of the face were soft, the chin well formed. The profile was artistic, and so excellent that a famous Berlin painter desired to sketch it for that alone. Her manners manifested a noble freedom, neatness, and good taste.”[18]
Thus does Bismarck’s grandfather depict his wife. There certainly is much of the sentimentality of the times in these characteristic sentences, but there is more—true affection and a cultivated sense. It evinces a well of poesy in the individual, that we grieve to find these thoughts clothed in the choicest French. The poet in him is then first justified when these periods are re-translated into German, for that they were thought in German is not to be doubted.
The four sons of Charles Alexander are:—Ernst Frederick Alexander, born the 14th of February, 1763; died a Colonel and Brigadier in 1813; his eldest son by a marriage with Louise von Miltitz is Theodore Alexander Frederick Philip von Bismarck, created Count Bismarck-Bohlen, the 21st of February, 1818. He is the second Bismarck of Schönhausen who gained the rank of Count; for the General Frederick von Bismarck, who obtained a similar dignity in the same year and month (the 17th February, 1818), from the King of Würtemberg, was also a Schönhausen. His line still endures in one son, while the title was also ceded to the descendants of his elder brother, the present Count von Bismarck-Schierstein.
The second son of Charles Alexander was Frederick Adolf Ludwig, born the 1st of August, 1766; he died in 1831, a retired Lieut.-General. In 1813 he was Commandant of Leipzig, in 1814 of Stettin, and owned the knight’s fee and estate of Templin, near Potsdam.
The third was Philip Ludwig Leopold Frederick, born the 21st February, 1770, a Major in the Mecklenburg Hussar Regiment; he died on the 25th October, 1813, at Halle on the Saale, of his wounds received at the battle of Möckern.
The fourth and last, Charles William Ferdinand, was the father of the present Minister-President.
CHAPTER V.
ARMORIAL BEARINGS.
Up with the banner in the morning air!
Raise high the ancestral shield up there!
For these loved symbols bid us know
That joyfully we van-ward go!
The shield of the Bismarcks exhibits a device, which, although it has not materially changed in the course of centuries, has at different times been variously blazoned. It displays a double trefoil, or, more exactly speaking, a round-leafed trefoil, flanked in its corners by three long leaves. The centre device has altered in the seals of various times, sometimes resembling a rose leaf, sometimes a clover leaf; finally it has remained a clover leaf. The other trefoil has been treated in the same way, the leaf being sharply serrated and shorter, or sometimes longer and but slightly serrated, finally becoming an oak leaf. The colors have also only been decided in later years. The shield is thus described:—
“In a field azure a golden clover leaf supported in the three angles by three silver oak leaves.” As to the crest, the arms of Ludolf von Bismarck exhibit two stags’ antlers on the helmet, evidently alluding to his official position as Ranger to the Margrave, for the buffalo horns now in use also often appear at a very early period. The present emblazoning of the crest is thus given:—“On a coronetted helmet displayed two buffalo horns proper in azure and argent crosswise—the helmet is azure and argent.”
The small gold coronet, which, contrary to every rule of good heraldry, is represented hovering between the horns, is a more recent addition. We are unable to decide when and how this coronet became part of the crest. Brüggemann, in his description of Pomerania, describes it as a Count’s coronet—for what reason we do not perceive.
On inspection of the earliest seals it is evident that the round trefoil was unquestionably the peculiar and original device, the elongated leaves having been subsequently added, disputing precedence with the clover leaf. Thus it is that afterwards we find the oak leaves small and the centre trefoil large—and contrariwise. If the clover be regarded as the principal device, it would be more heraldically true, as it is always emblazoned in gold, to blazon the horns in azure and or. Indeed, the heraldic ensigns of the Prussian Monarchy (Vol. I. p. 19) give the correct crest of the Bismarcks in the Armorial Bearings of the Counts of Bismarck-Bohlen.
The seal of the first Nicholas von Bismarck (1365) displays the device in a neat border, with a string of pearls within the inscription. This inscription, no longer very legible, is S. (Sigillum) Nicolay de Bismark. This border disappears on the seals of his three sons: the shield lies within a string of pearls on a field strewn with small crosses. In all these seals the trefoil is prominent, but in the seals of succeeding generations it becomes very small, the long leaves being prominent, until by lapse of time they assumed proportionate dimensions.
It would be idle and unheraldic to endeavor to identify symbols deriving their names from the botanical world, hence it would be useless to define the long leaves in the Bismarck arms as those of the Wegedorn, Christ-thorn, or White Bramble. This has, however, been done in support of the extraction of the Bismarcks from the Slavonic race—to identify it with Bij smarku (Beware of the Bramble), an idea which we must dismiss as entirely erroneous. The legends only recognize the clover leaf, and call the long leaves those of the nettle. In popular tradition these two ideas have become intermingled, as a proverb shows which was engraven on the blade of a sword of honor presented to Count Bismarck some years ago. This proverb is:—
Der Wegekraut sollst stehen lah’n—
Hüt dich, Junge, sind Nesseln d’ran.
Anglicé.[19]
The bramble thou shouldst let ’a be;
The nettle, boy, beneath you’ll see.
The round leaves were here supposed to be bramble (plantago); the serrated long leaves, leaves of the nettle.
We find the legend of the arms in the third volume of the Berlin Review of 1856, afterwards reprinted in Hesekiel’s Wappen Sagen, Berlin, 1865, as follows:[20]—
The leaf so green and goodly,
The wanderer’s delight,
In purest gold so shiny,
The Bismarck’s coat bedight—
The cloven leaf lights golden
All on an azure field,