Otto von Bismarck was a Junker
Otto von Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Ferdinand von Bismarck-Schönhausen, his father, was a Junker squire descended from a Swabian family who eventually relocated in Pomerania as estate proprietors. Ferdinand fit the mold of a Prussian landowner aristocrat. The family's financial situation was modest—farming Ferdinand's abilities were probably below average—and Bismarck did not experience prosperity until after German unification when the rewards began to flow - an interesting fact about Otto von Bismarck.
His mother, Wilhelmine Mencken, was born into a well-educated bourgeois family that included several higher-ranking professors and civil workers. She had married Ferdinand von Bismarck at the age of 16, and she found living in a small town to be limiting. She relocated to Berlin to be with her son Otto when he was seven and enrolled him at Berlin's forward-thinking Plamann Institute.
The young Bismarck regretted giving up a carefree life in the country for one that was more constrained in a big metropolis, where he was competing in school with the sons of the most educated families in Berlin. He attended the school for five years before spending an additional three at the Frederick William gymnasium. In 1832, he took the Abitur, a university admission test.
