Just three week's after Bismarck's death a committee met at the instigation of the city's mayor, Alfred Pauli and the leading petroleum importer and patron of the arts, Franz Schütte, in order to solicit donations for a memorial: Two people headed up the subsequent planning phase.

Gustav Pauli has been identified as a mentor of the artistic reform movement that was a feature of Bremen at the start of the twentieth century.

In respect of the proposed Bismarck memorial he found himself having to fend off opposition from conservative forces represented, as their leading spokesman, by Arthur Fitger.

A position on the city ramparts was rejected because it might be interpreted as "petty imitation" of the Hamburg Bismarck monument which had been signed off in 1901 (but would be completed only in 1906).

That left the open area by the cathedral, which was the location suggested by Adolf von Hildebrand, the well regarded sculptor who had already been co-opted as an expert advisor to the memorial committee.

Four years later the statue was ready, and on 9 July 1910 it was unveiled, placed on a six meter high plinth constructed according to a design by the architect Carl Sattler (who by this time had become the sculptor's son-in-law).

The chancellor sits on a horse at the top of a six meter tall stone plinth wearing a helmet and a slightly stylised version of the uniform of the Cuirassier regiment.