Bismarck monument

Today some of these monuments are on the soil of other countries including France, Poland and Russia as well as the former German colonies on other continents.

The size and cost of these symbols ranged from commemorative plaques to large monuments incorporating several groups of figures such as the Bismarck Memorial in Berlin.

Even before the unification of Germany, in the days of the North German Confederation, monuments were built in honour of Bismarck.

Frequently Bismarck was not honoured with a monument by himself, but was honoured together with other figures from the wars of 1866 and 1870–71 and those people involved in the unification of the Empire, such as Emperor William I, Crown Prince Frederick William, Moltke and Roon in the large number of victory or Empire monuments built after 1871 in many places.

The first public statues of Bismarck were taken from 1877 onwards (such as the indirect portrayal on the Canossa Column at Bad Harzburg).

Immediately after Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 committees were founded in several places to plan the erection of commemorative monuments.

In 1899 (i.e. one year after Bismarck's death), Wilhelm Kreis created a fundamental tower design, known as Götterdämmerung ("Twilight of the Gods") for a competition by the German Student Union in the shape of a massive pillar of fire.

The feature of these solid structures was the idea from the Student's Union that, on the top of all Bismarck columns, braziers would be built so that, on certain days, they could be lit in honour of former Chancellor, forming a network of beacons across Germany.

They were smelted for ore, destroyed by bombing (in some cases, such as the Königsberg tower, intentionally for strategic purposes) or removed after 1945.