Emperor William monuments

As early as 1867 the Berlin sculptor, Friedrich Drake, had created the first equestrian statue, that portrayed William I as the King of Prussia.

The only two equestrian statues are in Cologne (a free-standing monument on the Hohenzollern Bridge) and in Wuppertal's Elberfeld district (a 3/4 scale relief).

The first (still surviving) monument to William I, which portrays him as King of Prussia on horseback, stands at the bridgehead of Cologne's Hohenzollern Bridge (right bank, i.e. on the Deutz side).

The monument, with a height of 6.8 metres, had been created by Dresden sculptor, Johannes Schilling, and bore the inscription "The grateful city of Wiesbaden" on its base.

The last official monument was the equestrian statue "for" Lübeck: the authorization and contract award were issued in 1914; although the die was ready for casting, no bronze was available because of the First World War.