Bismarck Monument

This guide to the Bismarck Monument in Hamburg starts with an oddity: the statue's head alone measures taller than the men who stand beneath it. It traces how sculptor Hugo Lederer beat two hundred thirty-nine rivals in 1902 by refusing to carve an ordinary chancellor, raising instead a medieval Roland guardian, bearded and sword-bearing, staring over the Elbe toward Britain's navy. You'll hear how the granite giant rose block by block between 1903 and 1906. Look up and consider what it was really built to guard.