Black and white photo of Gottfried von Bismarck, a white man with light hair slicked back and light eyes downcast. He wears a suit and tie.
Content warning for addiction, ableism
“This whole thing has changed my life totally. I have learned a lot about addiction and I intend to change.”
– Gottfried von Bismarck
Celebrity can come in many different ways, some people actively seek it out, but some are born into it. That is the case for Gottfried von Bismarck, who was a Count and, because of this, spent his entire life under public scrutiny.
Born in Uccle, Belgium, on September 19, 1962, Bismarck was named after his great uncle, who was known as a Nazi official who was sent to a concentration camp because of his part in an assassination attempt against Hitler.
He spent much of his early life experiencing the positive aspects of his family’s status, raised with access to some of the best schools and never worried about money, he was given an internship at the New York Stock Exchange. From there, he went to Oxford to study, where he experienced his first intense media backlash.
Even now, the media has a very skewed perspective on addiction, which has little grounding in reality or science. While the medical community seems to be mostly in agreement that addiction is a chronic disease that isn’t a sign of moral failure, tabloids like the Daily Mail, along with more respected publications, continue to publish pieces treating people facing addiction like they have poor self control because of their addiction. So, it is not a surprise that in the 1980s, they weren’t working that hard to treat people with addictions with any level of respect.
From his first experiences with alcohol and various drugs, Bismarck began to struggle with addiction. At the same time, he was also wearing lipstick in public and going to parties, all things that media outlets deemed scandalous and “hell-raising” behaviour.
Media scrutiny came in at full force though upon the death of Bismarck’s close friend, Olivia Channon, in his home. After a night of celebrating the end of finals, she went to his room without his knowledge and died of an overdose of heroin, an event that deeply traumatized Bismarck.
The public response to this was to blame Bismarck, though authorities cleared him of any responsibility for the woman’s death, and he had no heroin in his apartment at the time. But because he had other drugs and was charged with possession, there was a public outcry, including people calling his parents to tell them Bismarck was a disgrace to the family name and “rotten.”
The media was no kinder, also laying blame for this death at Bismarck’s doorstep, going so far as to mock the fact that he cried at her funeral.
Both the event itself and the public response deeply affected Bismarck, resulting in him swearing off drugs and publicly promising to change his life, something that he attempted to do by seeking treatment and quickly moving back to Germany. There, he began working, attempting to help companies from East Berlin adjust to the drastic changes that had come from the fall of the Berlin Wall. He also got occasional work as an actor in small films in Germany.
When the phone company he was working with went under, he moved again, this time to London, where he worked in the promotion of holidays in Uzbekistan. It is also there that he relapsed.
Though the NIH describes relapse, saying:
“The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a "relapsing" disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drug.
It's common for a person to relapse, but relapse doesn't mean that treatment doesn’t work. As with other chronic health conditions, treatment should be ongoing and should be adjusted based on how the patient responds. Treatment plans need to be reviewed often and modified to fit the patient’s changing needs.”
This often is not the attitude that people without medical knowledge take in response to relapse, and it was not the one that was embraced by the media. Often, when the relapse is discussed, it is treated like the breaking of the promise he had made after the death of Channon.
In 2006 the situation was worsened by another friend of Bismarck’s, Anthony Casey, dying of a fall in Bismarck’s home. At the time of the accident, it was widely discussed as a “curse” that Bismarck was bringing around with him. Even though the drugs the man had in his system were a kind that inhibited the body’s ability to sense risks, the speculations rose again.
Though there was no sign of drugs on Bismarck’s property, and many people at the party saw Bismarck was nowhere near the man who died before his death, the situation was described as “mysterious.” The true mystery of the situation is what kind of journalistic integrity would allow one to write about a possible curse when two deaths happen near a person. Most people in their life experience death close to them at some point or another, two is hardly a large number, and not even close to a pattern warranting suspicion.
The alleged curse was not the only thing open to public discussion, the other thing that covered headlines was the fact that in the party, consenting adult men were having sex with each other.
Intimate details about this party were strewn everywhere, and even though Bismarck tried to tamp down public speculation, the man who died was revealed to have had a sexual relationship with another man.
A year after this incident, Bismarck died of an overdose himself. His family and friends were clear when they discussed him. Bismarck was an incredibly polite man who, despite the amount of “scandal” and speculation that surrounded him, was often very quiet. One friend who had dinner with him shortly before his death described him:
“He was looking a bit strange. Pale, thin and sweating a lot but was full, as ever, of brilliant and obscure conversation. He knows an awful lot about 19th and 20th century German and English history - much more than most English - but he definitely came across as a darkly complex man.”
He came out as gay in 1990, and his sexuality was used to define him as much as his addiction, the stereotypes of both eclipsing the reality of the man, which was that he was quite normal.
Bismarck was not exceptional one way or the other and is likely only remembered in the way he is because of the family he was born in. Forced from birth into the light of public scrutiny, his life was twisted into scandalousness at any opportunity. The fact that he was named after a Nazi who plotted to kill Hitler was shortened to he was named after a Nazi, years of his life in recovery forgotten, and every party magnified. His death was described as “Record-Breaking” when, in fact, it was only the corner who looked at his body and was surprised.
Every human being deserves at least the respect of having their story told truthfully, and while there are some details left, the majority of Bismarck’s life story is lost under the many layers of exaggeration and misinterpretation.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]
Attewill, F. (2006, October 5). Fatal fall after 'gay orgy' was misadventure. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/06/drugsandalcohol.uknews2
Belonsky, A. (2007, October 11). Bismarck Died Of Massive Overdose. Queerty. Retrieved from https://www.queerty.com/bismarck-died-of-massive-overdose-20071011
Camber, R. (2007, October 10). Aristocrat Count von Bismarck killed by record amount of cocaine. Daily Mail. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486841/Aristocrat-Count-von-Bismarck-killed-record-cocaine.html
Count Gottfried von Bismarck. (2007, July 8). Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.ie/world-news/count-gottfried-von-bismarck-26303191.html
Gottfried von Bismarck, 44; a descendant of the historic German unifier. (2007, July 6). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jul-06-me-bismarck6-story.html
Hayhurst, O. (2006, August 27). Fatal taste for pleasure that shamed the Bismarck name. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/aug/27/theobserver.uknews2
Lawless, J. (2007, July 5). Bismarck's playboy scion dies. The Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/news/2007/07/05/bismarcks_playboy_scion_dies.html
Lawless, J. (2007, July 5). Gottfried von Bismarck, 44, member of German royalty. Boston.com News. Retrieved from http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/07/05/gottfried_von_bismarck_44_member_of_german_royalty/
Miles, R. (2007, August 6). Down for the count went Bismarck. Retrieved from https://archive.macleans.ca/article/2007/8/6/down-for-the-count-went-bismarck
Milmo, C. (2007, October 11). Bismarck died after injecting cocaine 'every hour for a day'. Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/bismarck-died-after-injecting-cocaine-every-hour-for-a-day-394620.html
Pidd, H. (2007, July 4). Tragic party host von Bismarck found dead in London flat. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/04/germany.world
Roberts, G. (2006, October 6). Man fell to his death after 'gay orgy' at Bismarck flat. Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-fell-to-his-death-after-gay-orgy-at-bismarck-flat-418904.html