ASSOCIATED PRESS | Jul 4, 2007
By Jill Lawless
LONDON – Count Gottfried von Bismarck, whose life of privileged excess as a descendant of Germany’s “Iron Chancellor” was clouded by two deaths at his decadent parties, has died at the age of 44.
The Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that Bismarck, great-great-grandson of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany, had been found dead at his $10 million apartment in London’s Chelsea district on Monday. Police said they were treating the death as unexplained and a coroner’s inquest would be held to determine the cause.
Bismarck had a well-publicized history of drug use. His family in Germany said he had also been treated for epilepsy for many years.
“Count Gottfried was a wonderful person,” the family said in a statement.
Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen was born in 1962 and educated in Germany and Switzerland before attending Oxford University in England.
As an undergraduate, he was known for his extravagant appearance – which at times involved dressing in fishnet stockings or traditional Bavarian lederhosen – and his lavish parties. At one, guests were greeted by a pair of severed pigs’ heads on the dinner table.
He was a member of the Bullingdon Club – a dining society known for its raucous upper-class membership – and the Piers Gaveston Society, a 12-member club with a reputation for drunken excess and sexual shenanigans.
In 1986, Olivia Channon, the 22-year-old daughter of a Conservative government minister, died of a drug overdose in Bismarck’s bed at Oxford after an end-of-term party.
Bismarck – who was not in the bed at the time – was not implicated in the death, although he was charged and fined for possessing cocaine and amphetamine sulfate.
At his trial, his lawyer said Channon’s death “is going to be a shadow over the head of Gottfried von Bismarck, probably for the rest of his life.” The count said years later that some had accused him of disgracing the Bismarck name.
Bismarck eventually settled in London, working in finance and the telecom business. He remained out of the headlines until last August, when a 38-year-old man, Anthony Casey, died after falling from a roof garden during a party at Bismarck’s home.
Dr. Paul Knapman, presiding over an inquest at Westminster Coroner’s Court, said one room of the apartment contained a “bizarre” assortment of items including a large rubber tarpaulin on the floor, towels, lubricants, bottles of vodka and buckets of sex toys.
Police concluded Casey’s death was an accident, and the coroner’s verdict was “death by misadventure,” meaning no one was to blame.
Bismarck’s family said his funeral would be private.
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Count Gottfried von Bismarck; Known For His Extravagant Parties Dead at 44
Bullingdon Club
From Wikipedia
Membership has included Nathaniel Philip Rothschild
The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University, without any permanent rooms, infamous for its members’ wealth and destructive binges. Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most. The Bullingdon Club was founded over 150 years ago, originally as a hunting and cricket club, as the club’s crest shows.[1] It now exists primarily as a dining club with a vestige of hunting in the support of the point to point. The club traditionally meets for an annual breakfast at the Bullingdon point to point, and a club dinner, as well as smaller initiation dinners, before which the rooms of new members are wrecked. Members traditionally dress for their annual dinner in specially made tailcoats in royal blue with ivory silk lapel facings, brass monogrammed buttons, and a mustard waistcoat. Its modus operandi is to book a private dining room under an assumed name, then physically destroy it. Very large amounts of cash are then offered to the owners to pay them off for the destruction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
Piers Gaveston Society
From Wikipedia
Membership has included Darius Guppy, best man at the wedding of Diana’s brother Charles Spencer, and Tom Parker Bowles, stepson of Prince Charles.
The Piers Gaveston Society is an exclusive dining club at the University of Oxford with membership limited to 12 undergraduates. It is named in honour of Piers Gaveston, favourite and supposed lover of King Edward II of England. Its members have a reputation for indulging in bizarre entertainments and sexual excess. Words most often associated with this society are “decadence” and “debauchery.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Gaveston_Society
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