page_title: Ferdinand Lassalle
section_title: Relations with Bismarck
hierarchical_section_title: Ferdinand Lassalle / Political relations / Relations with Bismarck
caption_attribution_description: Bundestagsgesandter in Frankfurt 1858
context_page_description: Ferdinand Lassalle was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. “Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action”, or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it: “Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation what needed many decades to come about.” As agitator he coined the terms night-watchman state and iron law of wages.
context_section_description: On 11 May 1863, Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, wrote a letter to Lassalle. This letter was delivered and the two met face to face within 48 hours. This was the first of several such meetings, during which Bismarck and Lassalle freely exchanged views on matters of common concern. This Bismarck-Lassalle correspondence was not made public until 1927 and was therefore not mentioned by earlier biographers.
  In September 1878, Bismarck was pressed by Social Democratic representative August Bebel in the Reichstag to provide details about his past relationship with Lassalle, prompting the Chancellor to make the following statement:
  I saw him, and since my first conversation I have never regretted doing so. [...] I saw him perhaps three or four times altogether. There was never the possibility of our talks taking the form of political negotiations.  What could Lassalle have offered me? He had nothing behind him. [...] But he attracted me as an individual. He was one of the most intelligent and likable men I had ever come across. He was very ambitious and by no means a republican. He was very much a nationalist and a monarchist. His ideal was the German Empire, and here was our point of contact. As I have said he was ambitious, on a large scale, and there is perhaps room for doubt as to whether, in his eyes, the German Empire ultimately entailed the Hohenzollern or the Lassalle dynasty. [...] Our talks lasted for hours and I was always sorry when they came to an end.
  Bernstein noted that it is highly unlikely that Bismarck was telling the truth about their relation.
caption: Minister President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck, with whom Lassalle started political relations
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