Cohen-Blind's failed assassination attempt on Bismarck
- When
- undated
- Where
- unresolved
- Episodes
- 1
Ferdinand Cohen-Blind, a Jewish German student, attempted to assassinate Otto von Bismarck, the Minister President of Prussia, on May 7, 1866. The attack occurred on Unter den Linden in Berlin, where Bismarck was shot five times at close range. Cohen-Blind committed suicide shortly after his arrest, while Bismarck suspected a larger conspiracy involving the assassin's classmates.
Episodes
Background and detail
Background. Ferdinand Cohen-Blind was born in Mannheim to Jacob Abraham Cohen and Friederike Ettlinger. He studied at the University of Tübingen and the Agricultural Academy of Hohenheim, graduating in March 1866. After a hike through Bavaria and Bohemia, he wrote to his friend Mathilde Weber expressing a desire to punish those causing war's evils, even at the cost of his own life.
Aftermath. Cohen-Blind committed suicide shortly after his arrest. Bismarck immediately tried to tie the assassination attempt to a larger conspiracy and started surveilling Cohen-Blind's classmates.
People involved
- Ferdinand Cohen-Blind · Assassin
- Otto von Bismarck · Target
Sources
- Ferdinand Cohen-Blind Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-04
- Otto von Bismarck Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.