Volume 4, Number 8 · May 20, 1965
A Very Unpleasant Man
By James Joll
Bismarck
by Werner Richter, translated by Brian Battershaw
Putnam, 420 pp., $6.95
Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin—all three changed the face of Europe and each contributed to the making of our midtwentieth century world. In each case, the achievement transcends the man, and although the temptation to write their biographies will recur in each generation, the difficulty of doing so remains almost insuperable. However much 'world-historical' individuals on this scale may seem to disprove the view of history that sees great events solely as the result of social change and economic pressures, nevertheless it is impossible to write the life of any one of them without also writing about the whole complex of political forces, economic trends, and social movements with which they had to contend and which they had to try and master. In a biography of this kind, the man who is its subject often fades away, his human characteristics overlaid by his historical significance. Perhaps in the case of a cold power-seeking rationalist like Napoleon or an inspired and ruthless doctrinaire like Lenin, this does not much matter; but in Bismarck's case the individual personality is always imposing itself on our view of the statesman, and thus the biographers have been faced with problems of a psychological as well as of a historical kind and have often found it hard to strike the balance between them.
Review, 1729 words
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