Putin presented the medal to Alexander von Bismarck. who is he A distant relative of the first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, 75-year-old Alexander von Bismarck, received the Pushkin Medal on November 4, 2026 from the hands of the President of the Russian Federation in the Kremlin. This state award of the Russian Federation is awarded, among other things, for a great contribution "to the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of cultures, nations and nationalities". In his acceptance speech, the laureate quoted a sentence that is often attributed to the "Iron Chancellor": "When Germany and Russia are friends, Europe is good." According to historians and researchers of Otto von Bismarck, this phrase (or its revised version: "When Germany and Russia have good relations, peace reigns in Europe") does not appear in his speeches, documents, letters and memoirs. Meanwhile, Russian state media picked it up easily. In Germany, Alexander von Bismarck was repeatedly criticized for his close ties to Moscow. In 2023, after the German-Russian civil society forum "Petersburg Dialogue" stopped working due to the Russian war against Ukraine, he founded an alternative platform - the Russian-German Forum "Bismarck Dialogue". Alexander von Bismarck was born in 1951 in the city of Rheinbeck in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. Judging by open sources, Otto and Alexander belong to different branches of the same family. However, their common ancestor lived several centuries before Otto von Bismarck, which means that Alexander von Bismarck is not a direct descendant of the "Iron Chancellor". More details are in the DW material.

Putin presented the medal to Alexander von Bismarck. who is he A distant relative of the first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, 75-year-old Alexander von Bismarck, received the Pushkin Medal on November 4, 2026 from the hands of the President of the Russian Federation in the Kremlin. This state award of the Russian Federation is awarded, among other things, for a great contribution "to the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of cultures, nations and nationalities". In his acceptance speech, the laureate quoted a sentence that is often attributed to the "Iron Chancellor": "When Germany and Russia are friends, Europe is good." According to historians and researchers of Otto von Bismarck, this phrase (or its revised version: "When Germany and Russia have good relations, peace reigns in Europe") does not appear in his speeches, documents, letters and memoirs. Meanwhile, Russian state media picked it up easily. In Germany, Alexander von Bismarck was repeatedly criticized for his close ties to Moscow. In 2023, after the German-Russian civil society forum "Petersburg Dialogue" stopped working due to the Russian war against Ukraine, he founded an alternative platform - the Russian-German Forum "Bismarck Dialogue". Alexander von Bismarck was born in 1951 in the city of Rheinbeck in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. Judging by open sources, Otto and Alexander belong to different branches of the same family. However, their common ancestor lived several centuries before Otto von Bismarck, which means that Alexander von Bismarck is not a direct descendant of the "Iron Chancellor". More details are in the DW material.