Inquest in playboy's death

LONDON - Count Gottfried von Bismarck, whose life of privileged excess as a descendant of Germany's "Iron Chancellor" was clouded by two deaths at his decadent parties, has died at the age of 44.

The Metropolitan Police said yesterday that Bismarck, great-great-grandson of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany, had been found dead at his $10 million apartment in London's Chelsea district on Monday.

Police said they were treating the death as unexplained and a coroner's inquest would be held.

Bismarck had a well-publicized history of drug use. His family in Germany said he had also been treated for epilepsy.

"Count Gottfried was a wonderful person," the family said in a statement.

Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen was born in 1962 and educated in Germany and Switzerland before attending Oxford University in England.

As an undergraduate, he was known for his extravagant appearance - which at times involved dressing in fishnet stockings or traditional Bavarian lederhosen - and lavish parties. At one, the dinner table featured a pair of severed pigs' heads.

He was a member of the Bullingdon Club, a dining society known for its raucous upper-class membership, and the Piers Gaveston Society, a 12-member club with a reputation for drunken excess and sexual shenanigans.

In 1986, Olivia Channon, the 22-year-old daughter of a Conservative government minister, died of a drug overdose in Bismarck's bed at Oxford after an end-of-term party.

Bismarck - who was not in the bed at the time - was not implicated in the death, although he was fined for possessing cocaine and amphetamine sulfate.

Bismarck eventually settled in London, working in finance and the telecom business. He remained out of the headlines until last August, when a man died after falling from a roof garden during a party at Bismarck's home.

Dr. Paul Knapman, presiding over an inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court, said the apartment contained a "bizarre" assortment of items, including a large rubber tarpaulin on the floor, towels, lubricants, bottles of vodka and buckets of sex toys.

Police concluded that the death of Anthony Casey, 38, was an accident, and the coroner's verdict was "death by misadventure," meaning no one was to blame. *