He's crusty, he's conservative and he's been dead for 100 years - but Otto von Bismarck is currently Germany's number one pin-up. Today's centenary of the Iron Chancellor's death has unleashed a flood of commemorative books, newspaper supplements, television documentaries, souvenirs and T-shirts.
The Prussian statesman's reputation has improved in recent years so that politicians such as the present Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, are eager to compare themselves to him.
Dr Kohl, who is already the longest-serving German chancellor since the second World War, hopes to surpass Bismarck's record in office if he wins September's federal election.
German historians now regard Bismarck as the towering figure of the 19th century and his stature appears to grow as the years pass.
"The emperors and kings of his era have disappeared into the twilight or been forgotten altogether, from Napoleon III to Alexander I and Wilhelm I. But he has emerged from the ups and downs of history as a German figure of historic greatness," according to the Berlin writer, Wolf Jobst Siedler.
For the tourists who are snapping up Bismarck memorabilia in souvenir shops along Berlin's elegant Unter den Linden, images of his helmeted, whiskered, old face are specimens of Prussian chic. There is something to match every budget - from lighters for about £1 to a 24-carat gold-rimmed, porcelain plate showing Bismarck on horseback for £40.
Bismarck himself would probably be amused by his new-found status as a popular icon, not least because his entire political career was characterised by conflict.
Born at Schonhausen in eastern Germany on April 1st, 1815, into a land-owning junker family, Bismarck began that career in 1847, as an extreme-right member of the Prussian parliament.
Pursuing a policy of eliminating his country's rivals and expanding its power, he pushed Austria into war, then cast it out of the confederation after Prussia defeated it at Sadowa in 1866.
During the revolution of 1848, he was on the far right of the political spectrum and supported the monarchy against the majority of Prussian opinion. When he became prime minister of Prussia in 1862, he strengthened the armed forces in preparation for the wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870, which culminated in the unification of Germany and the foundation of the Wilhelmine Empire in 1871.
As chancellor, Bismarck clashed with the Catholic Church and suppressed the newly-formed Social Democrats, but he also introduced a system of social welfare, including health insurance and an old age pension. Both a pioneer and a conservative, he set up Germany's first central bank while keeping the emerging Social Democratic party firmly in its place.
"We Germans fear God and nothing else on earth and it is the fear of God that makes us love and cultivate peace," he said.
Yet Bismarck became associated with the rigidity of Prussian values and the militarism that characterised German society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1948, when Germany marked the 50th anniversary of his death, Bismarck's Prussia was widely viewed as a nationalist forerunner to Hitler's Germany.
His star waned with the accession of the impetuous new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, with whose foreign and colonial policies he disagreed.
On March 20th, 1890 he left office - immortalised by the London Punch cartoon entitled "Dropping the Pilot" - and retired to Pomerania, where he wrote his memoirs until his death. aged 75.
Official Germany is staging no celebrations for the great Prussian. The only public commemoration was on July 13th, organised by the local authorities in Hamburg and attended by the German-born former US secretary of state, Mr Henry Kissinger, an admirer of Bismarck.
The unification of east and west Germany in 1990 ushered in a new era of enthusiasm for all things Prussian and the return of the capital from Bonn to Berlin is likely to strengthen this process. In the meantime, the Bismarck T-shirts, cigarette lighters and other souvenirs are evidence that Germany has at last learnt to love the Iron Chancellor.