person

Otto von Bismarck

Bismarck

also: Бисмарк

Chancellor of the German Empire and the dominant figure in European diplomacy of the 1870s-80s, familiar to Chekhov from the newspapers he read for war coverage.

Reading notes

Two Newspapermen §14 Bismarck were to convert to the Mohammedan faith
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire; cited as the era's most implausible imaginable news event, in the same register as the comet and the Turks taking Kaluga.
Two in One §8 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire, the dominant figure of 1880s European diplomacy and Gambetta's presumed rival -- the same offhand newspaper-politics name Chekhov's characters reach for elsewhere in these sketches.
Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire §25 Bismarck
Chancellor of the newly unified German Empire; a fixture of 1880s Russian newspaper foreign-affairs coverage, invoked here as shorthand for the kind of highbrow political talk a mere chorister has no business attempting.
From the Notebook of Ivan Ivanych (Thoughts and Notes) §7 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire and the dominant figure in 1870s-80s European diplomacy -- stock shorthand here for weighty, serious conversation, set against a wife's supposed chatter about children.
To P. Ye. and Ye. Ya. Chekhov, 20 June 1878. Taganrog. §4 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the newly unified German Empire, then dominating European diplomacy and the newspapers Chekhov followed for war news.
To N. A. Leikin, 23 August 1884. Voskresensk. §7 German militarism, Bismarckism
Chekhov's wry aside at a reviewer who found occasion, in a piece about his comic story collection, to digress into contemporary political commentary on Otto von Bismarck's Germany.
To L. N. Trefolev, 14 April 1888. Moscow. §6 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire, invoked in mock-grandiose hyperbole -- Chekhov jokingly warns the boy that the loss of a single item of his donated clothing will provoke a speech from Bismarck in the Reichstag.
To A. S. Suvorin, 11 March 1889. Moscow. §14 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, already established elsewhere in this corpus, invoked purely as a byword for a powerful, high-status man in Chekhov's rhetorical claim that a servant is "made of the same flesh" as he is.
The Village Elder §3 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), the Prussian and German statesman renowned across Europe for his shrewd, ruthless political maneuvering ("Realpolitik"); invoked here as comic hyperbole -- Shelma claims peasant affairs demand cunning that would exceed even Bismarck's.
Artists' Wives §111 Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire, dragged into Zinzaga's overstuffed plot-summary as a stock villain of the international-intrigue potboiler genre being parodied.