The Kaiser's men’s medals

[TabsTabs1964]

Well, this is our last man from Stalingrad and this is his story told by the brilliant Antony Beevor.....

Gottfried von Bismarck

Gottfried von Bismarck (1921-2001) a great-grandnephew of Otto von Bismarck was the youngest son of Gottfried von Bismarck (1881-1928) and his wife, Gertrud Koehn (1890-1971).

His father Gottfried was son of Philipp Georg Klaus von Bismarck (1844-1894) and Marie Sophie Hedwig von Bismarck (1858-1945).

His grandfather Philipp Georg Klaus was son of Bernhard Friedrich Alexander Ferdinand von Bismarck (1810-1893) and Friederike Wilhelmine Adelheid von Bismarck (1824-1844)

His great-grandfather Bernhard Friedrich Alexander Ferdinand von Bismarck was the elder brother of Otto von Bismarck (Reichskanzler)

His last officer rank was probably Leutnant. He served in the Infanterie Regiment 178. of the 76. Infanterie Division.

Below I quote the three paragraphs that Beevor dedicates to this character in his book (this is how you will understand that we have previously talked about the air transport to the Kessel in Stalingrad)

"In addition to airlifting the wounded, messengers, and certain specialists, the planes still carried some officers and men who had gone on leave before the Kessel was closed. Due to the information blackout in Germany, many of them had no idea what had happened in his absence until their train arrived in Kharkiv".

"Manstein's aide, Alexander Stahlberg, recounted how his twenty-one-year-old cousin-in-law, Gottfried von Bismarck, arrived at the headquarters of the Don Army Group in Novocherkassk on January 2 after spending Christmas leave at his home in Pomerania. He had received an order to fly to Kessel to join the 76th Infantry Division. Manstein, discovering the situation, invited him to his table for dinner, where conversation was not limited".


Alexander Stahlberg (Manstein's adjutant)

"Both Manstein and Stahlberg greatly admired the way in which the young man, without complaint, respected the Potsdam tradition of the 9th Infantry Regiment by returning to a battle lost, not by Hitler, but by Prussian devotion to duty. Bismarck, however, put it in less glorious terms: "I was a soldier, I had received an order, and I was obliged to accept the consequences." (…)


Image of Manstein during a dinner

I upload this image of his elder brother Klaus since they were most likely similar


Klaus won the Knight's Cross for the capture and defense of Demyansk. At end of war he was a British POW

Obviously Leutnant Gottfried von Bismarck was captured after the German defeat and went into captivity in the USSR.



"In 1949, another wave of Stalinist purges ravaged the Soviet Union. Lieutenant Gottfried von Bismarck was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor because Russian prisoners of war had worked on his family property in Pomerania". (The family estate was Jarchlin and Kniephof in Pomerania).

"In 1955 there were still 9,626 German prisoners of war or "convicted war criminals" as Khrushchev defined them, of whom about 2,000 were Stalingrad survivors. These prisoners were finally released following Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's visit to Moscow in September 1955. Among them were Generals Strecker, Seydlitz, Schmidt, and Rodenburg and Lieutenant Gottfried von Bismarck, who, nearly thirteen years earlier, had flown to Kessel to meet his unit after dinner with Field Marshal von Manstein. Only to have survived, he wrote, was "reason enough to be grateful to fate."


Ltn. Gottfried von Bismarck in 1955 after being released, with his mother Gertrud Koehn (1890-1971). Captured in Stalingrad in 1943 and returned to Germany on October 9th, 1955.

Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, Gottfried von Bismarck´s sister-in-law, was Alexander Stahlberg´s cousin.




The memoirs of von Manstein's Adjutant are highly recommended.

Thus, these two descendants of Chancellor Bismarck and very distant cousins faced their captivity in a very different way.....Who could judge those men? Not me, of course.

[VtwinVince]

Again I commend you for your interesting thread. Bismarck is one of my heroes, I have not one but two pictures of him above my bed, including one which is autographed. He was a friend of my great-grandfather, who gave his son the middle names Otto Bismarck and had the chancellor as his godfather. Of course von Einsiedel is a polarising figure, as he was refused entry to JG3 reunions due to the perception that he was a traitor. My uncle, who was named after Bismarck, was coincidentally a Gruppenkommandeur in this same unit. Also, I believe Klaus von Bismarck was a winner of the Oakleaves.

[TabsTabs1964]

Once again you are right, Vince.

A quick search confirmed what Vince said about Klaus von Bismarck and a couple of photos that prove it.


Klaus von Bismarck with Knight's Cross


Klaus von Bismarck with Knight's Cross and Oak Leaves

For his prudent leadership he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on December 3, 1941. Promoted to captain in the reserves, he was released from military service in the summer of 1943 to manage the family property. In the fall of 1944 he voluntarily returned to the 4th Grenadier Regiment and became its commander. On November 26, 1944, he was awarded the Oak Leaves Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for the regiment's achievements. In February 1945 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. At the end of the war he was evacuated by ship to Schleswig-Holstein, where he was taken prisoner by the British.

After the war, he became head of the social welfare office of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia and was appointed to the administrative board of WDR. In 1960 he was elected director of WDR. In March 1977 he became president of the Goethe Institute.