Did Bismarck say: “They never lie so much as during the war, after the hunt and before the elections”?

On the eve of various elections, Russian media often recall a topical aphorism attributed to the “Iron Chancellor.” We checked whether its author is indeed Otto von Bismarck.

The fact that it was the “gatherer of German lands” who at one time uttered the saying in question is reported by such famous people as the journalist Leonid Radzikhovsky, political expert and connoisseur Anatoly Wasserman, Ukrainian politician Evgeniy Kushnarev (by the way, in the year the book with this quote was published, he died while hunting under strange circumstances), as well as news resources, including Radio Liberty And "Moscow News". Back in 1936, a phrase with a reference to Bismarck was included in the Soviet party publication "Restorers of capitalism and their defenders", and much later ended up in a book "100 Great Tyrants". This quote is also popular on West.

The modern German version of the famous phrase is “Es wird niemals so viel gelogen wie vor der Wahl, während des Krieges und nach der Jagd.” Precisely down to the article it can be found, for example, in transcript meetings of the Reichstag in 1918, with the mention of Bismarck. However, none of the versions of this statement published before 1898, that is, the year when the ex-chancellor died, contains a reference to the German politician.

The statement first appeared in 1879 in the weekly "In the New Reich", where it is attributed to an unnamed Reichstag member from the liberal "Wilhelm Loewe Groups", to which the conservative Reich Chancellor Bismarck had nothing to do. Three years later, again without mentioning Bismarck, it appears in the humoresque of Emil Dominique “How my friend became a member of the Reichstag”. After this, the phrase appears several times in print as "aphorism" (1895), "notorious answer" And "old story". And only in 1904 in magazine about the fight against venereal diseases, it is for the first time attributed to the famous politician: “... if Bismarck had to repeat his famous words about situations when people lie the most (before elections, during war, after hunting), then he would definitely have to put inflammatory diseases of the pelvic organs in women in first place.”

Thus, the famous quote about war, hunting and elections, apparently, has no historical connection with the biography of Otto von Bismarck and was attributed to him after his death.

Incorrect quote attribution

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