Background
He was the eldest of the three sons of Herbert von Bismarck, as well as the grandson of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and elder brother of Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen.
He was the eldest of the three sons of Herbert von Bismarck, as well as the grandson of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and elder brother of Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen.
A lawyer, he became the owner of the family estate in Schönhausen and joined the diplomatic service in 1927, serving in Stockholm (1927-1928), London (1928-1937), with the Foreign Ministry in Berlin (1937-1940), as Envoy to Rome (Kingdom of Italy) (1940-1943), and finally as head of the Italian section of the Foreign Ministry (1943-1944). In August 1942, Bismarck was directed to request that Italy turn over Jewish refugees in Italian-occupied Croatia for deportation to the East. He disclosed to the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano that the goal was the "dispersion and elimination" of these Jews.
He was also chairman of the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft from 1957 to 1961.
Bismarck married Ann-Mari Tengbom (1907–1999), a native of Sweden, daughter of Ivar Tengbom, on 18 April 1928, and they had six children, including the current head of the princely House of Bismarck, Ferdinand von Bismarck, and the philanthropist Gunilla von Bismarck.
Nazi Party, Christian Democratic Union, German National People"s Party.
He was a member of the DNVP (the conservative party) in the Weimar Republic, and served as a Member of Parliament from 1924 to 1928. In 1933 he joined the Nazi Party and in 1935 he became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. In the 1950s he considered becoming a member of the Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party) (the liberal party), which offered him a nomination for Parliament, but eventually joined the conservative Christian Democratic Union instead.
He was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and served as its Vice President from 1959 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1966.