It was paid for largely from a long-term public money collection, which was initiated by the city council of České Budějovice to honor the deceased Adalbert Lanna the Elder, who was a local native.

[1] The members of the ten-member Committee included, for example: industrialist Carl Hardtmuth, mayor Eduard Claudi, lawyer Wendelin Rziha, manufacturer Johann Stegmann, and chairman of the České Budějovice Chamber of Commerce and Industry Josef Schier.

Vendelín Grünwald, Hynek Zátka, and the bishop of České Budějovice, Jan Valerián Jirsík, were later also invited to the process of creating the monument.

[2] As early as February 1866, the director of the Viennese Imperial-royal artistic foundry in Wieden, Anton Fernkorn, announced his offer to create the monument.

The money collection was taking off, among the largest contributors was Lanna's friend, duke Johann Adolf II of Schwarzenberg of Hluboká nad Vltavou.

There he managed to obtain promises of further significant financial resources, among others, from the procurator of the Lanna company, Moritz Gröbe, and Anton Banhans (the future Minister of Agriculture).

In July 1868, Pönninger sent his first proposal from Vienna, which already included the cylindrical pedestal covered by reliefs, on which the statue of Adalbert Lanna the Elder would stand.

Among the participant who laid their wreath were, for example, railway manager Georg Löw, Prague politician Franz Schmeykal,[5] Prague banker Karl Amadeus Ritter von Zdekauer, the Elbe Society (Labský spolek in Czech) or the Ship Society (Lodní spolek in Czech) from Ústí nad Labem.

A letter was sent from Würzburg by Dr. Friedrich Scanzoni von Lichtenfels – a member of the Bavarian Royal Secret Coucil – who apologized for his absence at the unveiling ceremony.

[5] His son Adalbert Lanna the Younger was named an honorary citizen of České Budějovice,[8]: 57  to which he responded by contributing 10,000 florins to the city's orphan fund.

It even survived World War II, during which almost all large metal objects in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were put on a list, collected and melted down for military purposes.

During the night, surrounded by a crowd, the monument was tied to a tractor with chains and ropes and pulled to the ground with the assistance of Soviet army sappers.

[1] In 1963, Karel Kakuška, a worker of the České Budějovice branch of the State Institute of Historic and Natural Preservation, began working on a proposal for the restoration of the monument.

The entire long process was not completed until the events of 1968, after which the restoration of a monument dedicated to the České Budějovice businessman and industrialist was once again out of the question.

[1] The pedestal of the statue is made of red granite imported from the Bayreuth area and was created by the stonemason Erhard Ackermann from Weissenstadt following the design of Franz Pönninger.

On the east side: In English: Joyfully and tirelessly he worked, ripped the treasures of out of the earth, straightened the flows of rivers so that they would carry them to the sea.

This probably emphasizes the innovativeness, progressivity, and scientificity of Lanna's business activities as opposed to the old, repeated tradition of doing things the way they had been done since ancient times.

The whole scene is perhaps a combination of the traditional iconographic type of the posthumous apotheosis of the main character (an antique chariot passing under a festoon into a blooming Elysium) and the newly emerging iconographic type of the allegory of the railway (a heavily smoking torch carried in front and a putti pouring out a cornucopia along the way - a symbol of the economic prosperity that the railway is supposed to bring).

A pier post wrapped in a rope stands by Lanna's left foot - an attribute derived from his title of an Imperial-royal shipmaster.