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How lighthouse keeper saved Bismarck

Luke Harding

He was rescued while swimming in Biarritz.

HE WAS the man who famously unified Germany and ended France's domination of Europe. But new documents found in a dusty town hall reveal that Otto von Bismarck nearly drowned while swimming at the French seaside resort of Biarritz, an event that could have profoundly changed the course of European history.

Records found in the archive of the local swimming committee show that a quick-thinking French lifeguard, Pierre Lafleur, plucked a floundering Bismarck from the waves. Lafleur also rescued Bismarck's mistress — 21-year-old Katharina Orloff — who had also got into difficulties during the trip in August 1862.

"The weather was good and the ocean was calm. But somehow Bismarck got swept out to sea by a strong current," Monique Beaufils, archivist at Biarritz's town hall, said. "Lafleur rescued the unconscious princess first. He then went back for Bismarck who was waving his arms for help. This wasn't easy. Bismarck was a big man, 1.9 metres tall, and weighed 100 kg. By the time Lafleur got him back to the beach he had passed out. A doctor revived him a few minutes later."

The rescue of Bismarck — then Prussia's ambassador in Paris, in his mid-40s — would prove costly for France. Eight years later, in 1870, he masterminded Prussia's swift, crushing defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war, ending French primacy in Europe. The Iron Chancellor went on to unify Germany, something that had eluded its kings and rulers since Charlemagne.

The story, meanwhile, did not end happily for Lafleur, a lighthouse keeper. He drowned in the Atlantic four weeks later. Bismarck agreed to be godfather to Lafleur's baby son, while his mistress — the wife of an elderly Prussian war hero, Prince Orloff, who apparently tolerated the affair — became godmother.

Bismarck later recalled his time in Biarritz, where he met the French emperor Napoleon III, as the happiest of his life. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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