At no time there is more lying than before the elections, during the war and after the hunt. (Original: "Es wird niemals so viel gelogen wie vor der Wahl, während des Krieges und nach der Jagd.")

The earliest attestation is: A representative of the "Löwe faction" also aptly remarked: "There is never more lying than before the elections, during the war and after the hunt.", in: Im neuen Reich. Wochenschrift für das Leben des deutschen Volkes in Staat, Wissenschaft und Kunst. Volume 9 (1879), 1st semivolume, p. 199 books.google.

The witticism was first attributed to Bismarck in printed form, as far as it is clear, in Zeitschrift für Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten. Im Auftrage der Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten. Volume 2 (1904) p. 283 books.google: "[...] when Bismarck would have repeated his well-known word about the instances in which the most lying occurs, out of the three mentioned by him (before an election, during a war, after a hunt), he would certainly have to put pelvic inflammatory disease in women first." | Before this, it always went without naming an author as a "witticism" in 1895, as "the proverbial answer to the question when the most lying occurs" in 1897, as "an old story" in 1898 and as "what one usually says" in 1901. Die Neue Zeit - Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie even spoke of a "self-admission" of Bismarck in 1906; however, the fellow social democratic magazine Das freie Wort attributed it to an unnamed representative of the Zentrumspartei in that same year.