LONDON (Oct. 10) - The great-great-grandson of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck died in his near-empty, $10 million London apartment in July after recklessly injecting himself with cocaine, a coroner concluded Wednesday.
Count Gottfried von Bismarck, 44, had been injecting cocaine in the day before his death, said Sebastien Lucas, the pathologist who carried out the post mortem. He said Bismarck’s body contained the highest level of cocaine that he had ever seen.
“I think this is a very regrettable story. The reckless behavior with cocaine has caused his death,” said Coroner Paul Knapman, who recorded a verdict of death as a result of a dependence on drugs.
The descendant of the “Iron Chancellor” who unified Germany was found on a mattress July 2 by a real estate agent who had been asked to check on him by his father, Prince Ferdinand von Bismarck. Authorities believe he died two or maybe three days earlier.
Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schoenhausen was born in 1962 and educated in Germany and Switzerland before attending Oxford.
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 pigs’ heads on the dinner table.
He was a member of the Bullingdon Club - a dining society known for its 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.
Bismarck worked in finance and the telecom business. He remained out of the headlines until August 2006, when a 38-year-old man, Anthony Casey, died after falling from a roof garden during a party at Bismarck’s home. Police concluded Casey’s death was an accident.
Knapman said one room of Bismarck’s apartment contained a “bizarre” assortment of items, including buckets of sex toys, bottles of vodka and a large rubber tarpaulin on the floor.
