Bernhard Ernst von Bülow

Bernhard Ernst von Bülow (2 August 1815 – 20 October 1879) was a Danish and German statesman.

He was the son of Adolf von Bülow, a Danish official, and was born at Cismar in Holstein. His own son Bernhard von Bülow was also a German statesman and chancellor. He studied law at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Kiel, and began his political career in the service of Denmark, in the chancery of Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg at Copenhagen, and afterwards in the foreign office. In 1842 he became councillor of legation, and in 1847 Danish charge d'affaires in the Hanse towns, where his intercourse with the merchant princes led to his marriage in 1848 with a wealthy heiress, Louise Victorine Rücker. Their children included Bernhard, Adolf, Alfred and Waldemar (died age 2).

When the insurrection broke out in the Elbe duchies (1848) he left the Danish service, and offered his services to the provisional government of Kiel, an offer that was not accepted. In 1849, accordingly, he re-entered the service of Denmark, was appointed a royal chamberlain and in 1850 sent to represent the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein at the restored federal diet of Frankfurt. Here he came into intimate touch with Bismarck, who admired his statesmanlike handling of the growing complications of the Schleswig-Holstein Question. With the radical Eider-Dane party he was utterly out of sympathy; and when, in 1862, this party gained the upper hand, he was recalled from Frankfurt. He now entered the service of the Grand-duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and remained at the head of the grand-ducal government until 1867, when he became plenipotentiary for the two Mecklenburg duchies in the council of the German Confederation (Bundesrat), where he distinguished himself by his successful defence of the medieval constitution of the duchies against Liberal attacks.

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