Otto von Bismarck: Did you mean...?

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state, but a confederation...

Modern statue of Katharina von Bora (Martin Luther's wife) on the compound of the Lutherhaus, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

The corpse of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946) who was found guitly of war crimes and hanged 16 October 1946 after the Nuremberg Trials (1945-46).

A photograph of the German general Erich von Manstein (1887-1973), shown on the left, after the Siege of Sevastopol in 1941-2 during the Second World War (1939-45). The port in the Crimea was captured by Axis forces commanded by Manstein...

A 1924 photograph of General Erich von Ludendorff (1865-1937), Commander-in-Chief of the German Army during the First World War (1914-18). US National Archives

A 1629 portrait of the mercenary General Albrecht von Wallenstein, leader of the Imperial forces during the Thirty Years' War. (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich)

Statue of Argula von Grumbach (l. 1490 to c. 1564), Bavarian theologian and writer, by Mihai Buculei in Beratzhausen.

A colourised photograph of the German general Hans von Seeckt (1866-1936). Seeckt was head of the German Army through the 1920s.

Katharina von Bora (1499-1552), wife of Martin Luther, oil on panel painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526. Wartburg Stiftung, Eisenach.

A 1938 photograph of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946), Nazi German foreign minister, who negotiated the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. (German Federal Archives)