A playboy prince from Germany’s historic Bismarck family is suing his two brothers for a share of their inheritance said to be worth up to €1bn (£840m) in the latest escalation of a decades-long dispute.
Carl-Eduard, Prince of Bismarck, great-great-grandson of ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck, seeks a slice of the €83m (£70m) pie from his younger brother Gregor and sister Vanessa after he was disinherited in 2002 by his father, Ferdinand von Bismarck, for his scandalous party lifestyle.
The prince, nicknamed ‘Street’, has long been ridiculed for his drunken antics and was described as ‘Germany’s laziest parliamentarian’ for consistently failing to show up for meetings and votes during his tenure in the country’s federal parliament between 2005 and 2007.
He has been feuding with his brothers for decades in a feud that his fourth wife described as stemming from a “dysfunctional environment, unspoken truths, personal drama, greed and Dante-level jealousy.”
During a particularly shocking incident at his baroque estate near Hamburg in 2010, police were allegedly forced to handcuff him after he tried to evict his own mother from her room.
He told Bild at the time: ‘The police arrived and suddenly I found myself handcuffed on the ground with my face in the sand.
And my brother was yelling at the officers to test me for drugs and alcohol. They did so, and when the results were negative, he told them: “Get better equipment.”
His mother, he added, had withdrawn a legal complaint against him for bodily harm and had given a sworn statement that he had never threatened her with a hunting weapon.
Carl-Eduard von Bismarck and Alessandra von Bismarck attend the 46th The Bests Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel on December 11, 2023 in Paris, France

Princess Elisabeth Von Bismarck (R) and Gregor Graf Von Bismarck (L) attend an opening ceremony of the German Historical Museum in Berlin in April 2015.
That incident arose from Carl-Edmund’s claim that his mother, Princess Elizabeth, was a raging alcoholic and anti-Semite who often insulted his third wife, Nathalie Bariman, a Jewish woman whom he has since divorced.
The prince previously admitted to being arrested for drunk driving and being visited by bailiffs over unpaid debts.
The brothers met this week in a court in the northern German city of Lübeck with the times Reporting that they did not look at each other even once and let their lawyers speak.
The case, presided over by Judge Stephen Schlöpke, has not ruled, and has requested more documents to understand the full extent of the family’s assets.
Gregor, the youngest son, claimed that his brother had received a loan from their father before his death in 2019, which, if confirmed, could mean the playboy prince would get an even smaller portion of the inheritance.
While Schlöpke has suggested that the parties resolve the matter outside of court, observers believe it is unlikely that the dysfunctional family, once at the pinnacle of power in Germany, will ever do so.
Carl-Edmund is far from the only Bismarck to disgrace the once great name.
His younger brother, Count Gottfried von Bismarck, tragically died of a cocaine and heroin overdose in his Chelsea penthouse, and the pathologist at the time of his death claimed that his body had the largest amount of cocaine he had ever seen.

The prince claimed his mother was a raging alcoholic and anti-Semite who often insulted his third wife, Nathalie Bariman (pictured, left).

Fernando Príncipe von Bismarck-Schoenhausen with his granddaughter Vanessa in Malaga, Spain, 1985
Gottfried was also linked to several other fatal accidents in the United Kingdom.
In 1986, Olivia Channon, the 22-year-old daughter of former Trade and Industry Secretary Paul Channon, choked to death on her own vomit after falling asleep under the influence of heroin at one of Gottfried’s parties at Oxford University.
And in 2006, a year before his own death, Anthony Casey fell 60 feet from the ceiling of Gottfried’s Chelsea apartment after taking a potentially lethal amount of cocaine following a gay orgy.
Even Otto von Bismarck, the man who cemented the family legacy, has been falling out of favor in recent years.
In 2022, the German Foreign Ministry removed his name from a room and removed his portrait from its building after his links to German colonialism came to the forefront of public debate.
Annalena Baerbock, Minister of Foreign Affairs, changed the name of the Bismarck Hall to the “Hall of German Unity”.