Carl-Eduard Otto Wolfgang Jayme Anders Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (born February 16, 1961 in Zürich) is a German politician (CDU).
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Bismarck is the grandson of the CDU politician Otto Christian Archibald, Prince von Bismarck, the great-grandson of Herbert, Prince von Bismarck and the great-great-grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck's younger sister, Countess Vanessa von Bismarck-Schönhausen (b. 26 March 1971, Hamburg, Germany) works in public relations in the United States. His brother Count Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen died of a heart attack in 2007.
Following his Abitur in 1982 in Wentorf, he served in the military as an officer cadet, and from 1985 to 1989 he studied economics. In 1987 he married Mexican-American actress Laura Harring. The couple divorced in 1989 but they reportedly remain friendly. In 1997 he married Celia Demaurex (1971–2010), but they were also divorced a few years later. She died of metastasized skin cancer on December 17, 2010. Since 2004, he has been married to Nathalie Bariman, with whom he has two children.
Between 1989 and 1992, he worked for the company Investor Treuhand in Düsseldorf. Since 1993 he has worked for the Princely Bismarck Administration (Fürstlich von Bismarck'schen Verwaltung) in Friedrichsruh.
He became a member of the CDU in 1995, and was elected vice-chairman of the CDU in the Duchy of Lauenburg in 1999 (his ancestor, Otto von Bismarck, had been the nominal Duke of Lauenburg in the 1890s).
When Peter Harry Carstensen became Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Bismarck replaced him in the Bundestag, the German parliament.
In the 2005 federal election, he won his constituency with a plurality (44.4%) of the vote.
In 2007, he was called "Germany's laziest member of Parliament" by the Tabloid Bild, because he attended only 14 of 27 parliamentary sessions since the 2005 elections and voted only two times. He also failed to work in any of the parliamentary subcommittees and never attended any political meetings in his electoral district.[1]
He stepped down from his mandate on December 19, 2007.[2] If he had stepped down in January, as planned, he would have been eligible for a pension, inciting more criticism.[2]