So it came about that at the age of twenty-four all prospect of an
official career had for the time to be abandoned, and Otto settled down
with his brother to the life of a country squire. It is curious to
notice that the greatest of his contemporaries, Cavour, went through a
similar training. There was, however, a great difference between the two
men: Cavour was in this as in all else a pioneer; when he retired to his
estate he was opening out new forms of activity and enterprise for his
countrymen; Bismarck after the few wild years away from home was to go
back to the life which all his ancestors had lived for five hundred
years, to become steeped in the traditions of his country and his caste.
Cavour always points the way to what is new, Bismarck again brings into
honour what men had hastily thought was antiquated. He had to some
extent prepared himself for the work by attending lectures at a newly
founded agricultural college in the outskirts of Greifswald. The
management of the estate seems to have been successful; the two brothers
started on their work with no capital and no experience, but after
three or four years by constant attention and hard work they had put the
affairs in a satisfactory state. In 1841, a division was made; Otto had
wished this to be done before, as he found that he spent a good deal
more money than his brother and was gaining an unfair advantage in the
common household; from this time he took over Kniephof, and there he
lived for the next four years, while his brother took up his abode four
miles off at Kulz, where he lived till his death in 1895. Otto had not
indeed given up the habits he had learnt at Göttingen; his wild freaks,
his noisy entertainments, were the talk of the countryside; the beverage
which he has made classical, a mixture of beer and champagne, was the
common drink, and he was known far and wide as the mad Bismarck. These
acts of wildness were, however, only a small part of his life; he
entered as a lieutenant of Landwehr in the cavalry and thereby became