[7] In one of his last actions before leaving Frankfurt for St. Petersburg, Russia, Bismarck consulted Baron Mayer Carl von Rothschild for the name of a banker in Berlin to whom he could turn for personal as well as Prussian state business.

Rothschild gave the name of Gerson Bleichröder, who took over Bismarck's private banking transactions as well as the transfer of credits or placing of loans on behalf of the Prussian state and the German Empire.

The Congress of Vienna in 1815 established the German Confederation which organized nearly all of the German-speaking states under the control of the dual authority of Austria and Prussia.

This landowning aristocracy required the Austrian state to maintain high tariffs against the cheap imports of raw farm products.

Prussia, because of its location near the Baltic Sea was an up-and-coming power in Europe based on the new economy of trade, commerce and manufacturing.

Frederick William IV's chief minister from April 25, 1849, until November 1850, was General Joseph von Radowitz.

In October 1850, an agreement was made to have an assembly of all German states meet in the city of Erfurt, Germany to form this "Prussian Union.

[18] From this position of power, the Zollverein brought about the rapid industrialization of northern Germany and became a prime reason for Prussian involvement in the Second Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864.

As result of that war, two predominately German-speaking duchies, Schleswig and Holstein were ceded by Denmark and annexed by Prussia and Austria.

Even as late as the middle of the twentieth century, both duchies remained predominately rural with only 24% of the total population living in the main cities of Kiel ( 1950 pop.

[22] This, then, is the background of the building of the German Empire against which the relationship of Gerson Bleichröder and Otto von Bismarck played itself out.

Austria sought to create difficulties for its up-and-coming rival—Prussia—by entertaining the idea of inviting the heir of the deposed House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg—Duke Frederick VIII of Augustenburg—back to administer the Holstein duchy.

Gerson Bleichröder opened secret negotiations with Moritz Ritter von Goldschmidt to pay a large sum of money to Austria for any and all rights to the two duchies of Holstein and Schleswig.

Furthermore, Bismarck as a monarchist had long detested elected parliaments of all kinds and he especially hated going "hat in hand" to the United Diet to beg for money.

For instance there was the Preussische Seenhandlung, a bank that had been founded by Frederick the Great in 1772, that still operated as an independent institute under the Prussian throne.

In the summer of 1865, the Rothschild Bank, working through Gerson Bleichröder, underwrote an entire public offering of bonds against the government shares of Seehandlung.

In the end the government shares in the Cologne-Minden Railroad were sold to raise money independently of the United Diet.

[30] The spectacular victory of the Prussian Army at the battle of Sadowa (Könnigrätz), on July 3, 1866, during the Austro-Prussian War, changed the entire face of Europe.

No longer merely an economic union like the Zollverein, the North German Confederation had a constitution and a democratically elected Reichstag based on universal popular sovereignty.

However, since the utter defeat of the Austrians at the battle of Sadowa, the three south-German states had begun to look to an alliance of Austria and France as their only protection.

Thus, war clouds rose again as Prussia began to see France as the major obstacle to unification of all Germany under the Prussian throne.

[34] As the chief banker for Bismarck and the Prussian state, Gerson Bleichröder was also in a position to help several influential German families in their hour of need.

In 1868, an ambitious 915-mile railroad project in Rumania, which would link the Rumanian capital, Bucharest, with all other major parts of the country, was touted to investors by financier Bethel Henry Strousberg.

The mausoleum was destroyed in 1950 on the orders of the communist Wilhelm Pieck, then President of the GDR, because it towered over the new socialist memorial created according to his plans, which he felt detracted from the overall impression.

The New York company operated for many decades as Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder Advisers and was only renamed First Eagle Investment Management in 2009.