"Let us cavort like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean."

But yet consistent killjoys like Leona Helmsley and Dick Cheney still live, inexplicably, on. Yes, there is no party-loving God.

"He never married."

The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

...

Von Bismarck's university career ended in catastrophe in June 1986, when his friend Olivia Channon was found dead on his bed, the victim of a drink and drugs overdose. Von Bismarck admitted that his role in the affair had brought disgrace on the family name; five years later he told friends that there were still people who would not speak to his parents on account of it, and who told his mother that she had "a rotten son".

Wow.

Bismarck Revisited.

That account had everything but the teddy bear called Aloysius and the plovers eggs.

Shit.

That may have been the most fascinating obit I have ever read--the creme de la creme, as it were

I'm sorry I never heard of this guy, who "dressed in the lederhosen of his homeland"

@Fawn Leibowitz:dressed=clad, much more descriptive, of course

Someone dying in your bed "at university" or anywhere else is kind of a future wrecker, no matter who you are.

Does it say what he died of? I'll go out on a limb and guess it was EVERYTHING.

You know when the Telegraph calls you 'louche' that you are really being read the Riot Act.

"Flamboyant waster..."
"...he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings."
"...ordered home to the family castle near Hamburg by his father..."
This is, without a doubt, the funniest obit in history.

Choire,

Have you tried emulating Dash Snow? It has some of the perks of a Bismarck lifestyle except with an emphasis on creation and, in all likelihood, you'd only have to live to 34 or so.

@de wolfe: Unless you're a Kennedy, you mean.

From the Herald Tribune article:
Bismarck eventually settled in London, working in finance and telecommunications. He remained out of the headlines until last August, when Anthony Casey, 38, died in a fall from a roof terrace at Bismarck's home. Dr. Paul Knapman, presiding over an inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court, said there had been "a gay orgy going on." The police concluded that the death was accidental, and the coroner's verdict was "death by misadventure," meaning no once was to blame.

Wow. The sort of death one would aspire to. Death by misadventure.

Who to emulate now...are there any Romanovs around? The aristocracy could use more horse-fucking.

"a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies."

Renaissance man.

I can't wait until David Hyde Pierce plays him in the TV movie.

I'm sorry, but 44?

I'd like to know where this guy was during the invasion of Poland.

Now it's just down to Claus von Bulow.

@TedSez: exactly. if that guy is 44, i am the Phyllis Diller.

Louché!

Perhaps he died of that large tumor on his forehead.

I always suspected Althorp was a raging queen.

As Vantwe said, it's everything but how he died. Will he be buried in one of his lederhosen outfits?

No, Count GvB's to be cremated, and Keith Richards is at the top of the waiting list to snort them.

Oh, poop. I was hoping this was an article on the death of one of those fucks from American Idol.

OH well. RIP German dude.

Wow. Dead at only 44. It's never the ones you expect.

@misspolandspring:
"It seems like all of Mr. Mugatu's models have a bad habit of dying young in freak accidents."

@econdave: Eh. David comes across as rather asexual, and Count Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen seems anything but.

@Honoria Glossop: The perfect ending for the perfect obituary.

Can anyone account for the whereabouts of Jenna Maroney? After all, she did do in Gerhardt, the Crown Prince of Hapsburg.

"he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs."

I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds fabulous.

@yellojkt: "Zank you for coming to my birzday party!"

Was reading about the Piers Gaveston Society, and the Brideshead scene if you can call it that, and look who turns up in one of the articles, playing croquet:

[www.dafjones.com]

That paragraph really doesn't say it all though! It gets better and better until it ends with the one final bon mot: "He never married." Brilliant!

@Colonel Mustard: truly. viscount althorp (now earl spencer) was princess di's younger brother.

"Louche Aristocrat" has to be the best business card title ever.

PS - all these posts and no "Aristocrats" jokes?

It's just the best death announcement ever. The biopic writes itself.

No, that would be David Hyde Pierce in the Operetta.

@ The real JR

You have a point about the Kennedys.

Maybe Elton John can rework Candle in the Wind for the upteenth time (Goodbye German Prince?) for Gottfried's funeral.

A life of "gilded aimlessness."

What more could any of us ask for?

I wonder how he died.

@Ndebo: He overlouched.

@Ndebo:

Undiagnosed genetic heart defect? Those are bitches.

In case you were wondering what a "mekon-like head" was...
[en.wikipedia.org]

My guess is, death by levitating chair with that massive melon of his.

@jupiterspaw: Something tells me he's already warming up his pipes. As if their circles never overlapped...

Amateur.

Jörg Immendorff, who died on Monday aged 61, was Germany's best-known and most provocative artist, a close friend of the former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and, in 2003, the central figure in a sex scandal involving prostitutes and cocaine-fuelled orgies at a luxury hotel.

In what became known as the Orgy of the Year, Immendorff was discovered naked having his nipples licked by a retinue of seven young filles de joie, while 11 grams of cocaine lay ready for consumption on a Versace ashtray nearby.

"Promoting holidays to Uzbekistan"?

@Joe Buck: Dafydd Jones has mortifying pictures of every posh English man/woman who ever lived, I think. There are also pix of Nigella playing tennis from her sedan chair. You should see the pix of a drunk Hugh Grant dressed as a tiny-toga'd Bacchus. Vanity Fair hired him for about two months, but people screamed so loud they had to send him back to England.

As tittilating as this reads on first pass, what with all the Count this and that "as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies", is not "pleasure seeking heroin addict" et al. unforgiveably redundant? "Reckless", "flamboyant", and "extravagant" -- Christ, we get it.

You had me at "dead Gay Count Fuckula", already!

@ANDIAMTELLINGYOU:

How true! This from Wikipedia: The Elton John album Rock of the Westies features the song "Dan Dare (Pilot of the Future)" in which Elton sings, "Dan Dare doesn't know it...but I like the Mekon."

Now I know what I did all wrong in my youth!

[From the uplifting obit]:In the reunified Germany, von Bismarck managed several telecoms businesses and, armed with a doctoral thesis on the East German telephone system, oversaw the sale of companies formerly owned by Communist East Germany to the private sector.

By the late 1990s von Bismarck was working for Telemonde, Kevin Maxwell's troubled telecoms firm based in America, with responsibility for developing the business in Germany; the company collapsed in 2002 with debts of £105 million. Von Bismarck eventually returned to London, where he became chairman of the investment company AIM Partners, dabbled in film production and promoted holidays to Uzbekistan.
[End of segment.]

If I had wanted to get to positions of senior management and chairman within private equity or national telecom, I should have done HEROIN in college, had a friend die of an OD in my room, and drink myself into a stupor becoming famous for "gay orgies".

Add the fact that I am neither gay nor a man and MY gay orgies would have been the talk of the town! Provided I was conscious enough to read the gossip columns.

Ah, my wasted youth...