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Swedish-born Princess Ann Mari von Bismarck-Schonhausen (ne Tengbom, b 1907) was married in 1928 to Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck, grandson of the Iron Chancellor. She had 6 children. During the Second World War, Otto was an envoy at the German Embassy at the Quirinal in Rome until August 1943, where the couple were active in society, hosting high-ranking Italians and Germans, including fascist politician Filippo Anfuso, who reported Ann Mari as saying, ‘Germany is lost … Hitler has ruined the country and its people.’ Quite a brave remark at the time! Back in Berlin, from November 1943 to November 1944, Otto was head of the Italy Committee in the Foreign Office but released because of the family’s links with members of the resistance group against the Nazis.

After this, Otto and Ann Mari managed the family manor of Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, which became the headquarters of the ‘White Buses’ operation in the spring of 1945, set up to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country, using 35 white buses painted with red crosses and other vehicles. This came about through Ann Mari’s lifelong friendship with Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg, vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, who, with the Danish government, had negotiated with Himmler the release of Scandinavian and other prisoners from the camps. Ann Mari von Bismarck died in Marbella, Spain in 1999, at the age of 92.