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49 free Otto Von Bismarck trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Otto von Bismarck trivia quiz covers the Prussian Junker who forged the German Empire and then spent two decades keeping Europe at peace. The easy questions ask about his nickname, the country he unified, the year the empire was proclaimed, the famous phrase from his 1862 speech and the Kaiser who dismissed him. Then it works through the three wars: Schleswig-Holstein and the Gastein Convention, the seven-week war against Austria and Königgrätz, the Ems Dispatch and Sedan, and the proclamation in the Hall of Mirrors. The hard end is for people who read diplomatic history for pleasure: the American friend from Göttingen who wrote him into a novel, the two English girls who nearly wrecked his career, the budget loophole he ruled through for four years, the assassin who shot him five times, the Kulturkampf and the Centre Party, the League of the Three Emperors and the Reinsurance Treaty, the sickness, accident and old-age insurance laws, the Duke of Lauenburg title he joked about, and the words he had carved on his own tomb. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Bismarck and the Ems Dispatch before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our German history, Franco-Prussian War and 19th-century Europe quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Otto von Bismarck's firm rule and Realpolitik earned him what nickname?
The Iron Chancellor
He served as the German Empire's first chancellor from 1871 to 1890.
Q 02Under Bismarck, Prussia provoked three short wars against which three countries?
Denmark, Austria and France
Denmark fell in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870–71, each war clearing a path to unification.
Q 03In which year did Bismarck become Minister President and Foreign Minister of Prussia?
1862
King Wilhelm recalled him on the advice of War Minister Roon after the Landtag rejected the army budget.
Q 04Bismarck said in 1862 the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and votes but by what?
Iron and blood
He called speeches and majorities 'the great mistake of 1848 and 1849'.
Q 05Where was Bismarck born in 1815?
Schönhausen
It was a family estate west of Berlin; the next year the family moved to Kniephof in Pomerania, where he grew up.
Q 06Bismarck came from which class of Prussian landed nobility?
Junker
He played up the backwoods-squire image by wearing uniforms, though he spoke English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian.
Q 07Which American student, later a famous historian, befriended Bismarck at Göttingen and put him in a novel?
John Lothrop Motley
Motley's 1839 novel Morton's Hope drew on their student days; the two stayed close for life.
Q 08Bismarck jeopardised his early legal career by taking unauthorised leave to pursue what?
Two English girls
Laura Russell, niece of the Duke of Cleveland, and Isabella Loraine-Smith were the objects of his attention.
Q 09Whom did Bismarck marry in 1847?
Johanna von Puttkamer
He proposed a month after the death of her cousin Marie, with whom he had formed an intense friendship.
Q 10In 1851 Bismarck was appointed Prussia's envoy to the Diet of the German Confederation in which city?
Frankfurt
He needled the Austrian representative by copying his habit of smoking and removing his jacket in meetings.
Q 11Bismarck served as Prussian ambassador to which two countries before becoming Minister President?
Russia and France
In St Petersburg he nearly lost a leg to botched treatment; in Paris in 1862 he took the measure of Napoleon III.
Q 12Bismarck kept collecting taxes without a passed budget by exploiting what he called a legal what?
Loophole
He argued the constitution said nothing about a failed budget, so the previous year's budget simply carried on.
Q 13Under the 1865 Gastein Convention, Prussia took Schleswig while Austria received which duchy?
Holstein
Austria's later demand that the Diet settle the duchies gave Bismarck his pretext for war in 1866.
Q 21Napoleon III was captured at which battle of the Franco-Prussian War?
Sedan
Bismarck kept him in Germany for a while in case he was needed to head a French regime; he died in exile in England in 1873.
Q 22The King of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on 18 January 1871 in which room?
The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles
The new empire was a federation of 25 states, with the emperor only 'first among equals'.
Q 23Which two provinces did France cede after 1871, poisoning Franco-German relations for decades?
Alsace and part of Lorraine
Q 14How long did the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 last?
Seven weeks
Prussia's win at Königgrätz was decisive, and Bismarck insisted on a soft peace with no annexations from Austria.
Q 15Which battle decided the war of 1866 in Prussia's favour?
Königgrätz
The king wanted to march on Vienna; Bismarck enlisted the crown prince to talk him out of it.
Q 16Which country did Bismarck secretly ally with before the 1866 war, forcing Austria to split its forces?
Italy
Italy wanted Venetia, which it duly annexed after Austria's defeat.
Q 17In 1866 Ferdinand Cohen-Blind shot Bismarck how many times at close range, causing only minor injuries?
5
Cohen-Blind killed himself in custody; Bismarck later blamed socialists for two 1878 attempts on the Kaiser instead.
Q 18What federation did Bismarck create under Prussian leadership after Austria's 1866 defeat, excluding Austria?
The North German Confederation
It bound the smaller northern states to Prussia and pointedly excluded Austria.
Q 19What is the edited account Bismarck published in 1870 to goad France into war called?
The Ems Dispatch
Wilhelm was taking the waters at Bad Ems; France declared war six days later, on 19 July 1870.
Q 20The crisis of 1870 began when a Hohenzollern candidate was offered the throne of which country?
Spain
Leopold withdrew, but Paris then demanded a promise that no Hohenzollern would ever seek the crown again.
Historians debate whether Bismarck wanted the annexation or was pushed by Moltke and public opinion.
Q 24On what basis was the war indemnity France paid after 1871 calculated?
To match what Napoleon I imposed on Prussia in 1807
It was worked out by population, as the precise equivalent of the 1807 indemnity.
Q 25What did Bismarck recite, apparently to mock the French, in his only known voice recording of 1889?
The first verse of La Marseillaise
A biographer says he did it 19 years after the war purely to needle France.
Q 26What title was Bismarck given in 1871 after unification?
Prince (Fürst)
He also bought a former hotel at Friedrichsruh near Hamburg, which became his estate and eventually his mausoleum.
Q 27Bismarck's 1870s campaign against the Catholic Church in Prussia is known by what name?
Kulturkampf
Every Prussian bishop was imprisoned or exiled and the Jesuits expelled, yet Catholics answered by building the Centre Party.
Q 28Which religious order was expelled from Germany in 1872 during Bismarck's anti-Catholic campaign?
The Jesuits
An 1875 law then required civil ceremonies for weddings to be legally recognised.
Q 29Bismarck dropped his anti-Catholic campaign in 1878 because he needed whose votes?
The Centre Party
The more pragmatic Pope Leo XIII, elected that year, negotiated away most of the anti-Catholic laws.
Q 30Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878 followed two failed assassination attempts on whom?
Kaiser Wilhelm I
He blamed the Social Democratic Workers' Party without evidence; some 330 workers' organisations were banned over twelve years.