Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), known as
Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative
Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that
unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding
Austria, into a powerful
German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871 he skillfully used
balance of power diplomacy to preserve German
hegemony in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace. For historian
Eric Hobsbawm, it was Bismarck who "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, [and] devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers."