RETHINKING BISMARCK

INTERNATIONAL OPEN COMPETITION
TO CONTEXTUALISE THE BISMARCK MONUMENT
IN THE ALTER ELBPARK IN HAMBURG

Since its construction in 1907, the Bismarck Monument in Hamburg’s Alter Elbpark has been invested with a great number of connotations. Today, it is seen by many as an expression of an authoritarian and colonial tradition that is part of our history and to which we must and we wish to find an adequate response. It is necessary to reframe this widely visible monument because in terms of its position, use and symbolic association it manifests complex references to colonialism, National Socialism, discrimination and questions of social justice that had previously not been in evidence.
In 2021 several workshops were held which, together with international experts, offered a forum for discussing future possibilities of dealing with the monument. Within the framework of a competition a call has now gone out to artists and architects to develop ideas for recontextualising the monument. We need to break with previous perceptions of the monument in order to highlight their charged relationship to notions of democracy, discourse and pluralism underpinning our open society – on behalf of the hundreds of other Bismarck monuments throughout Germany. The purpose of this initiative is to signal the need to further develop our culture of remembrance.
The aim of the competition is to make the invisible visible. Information and artistic interventions should seek to foster a critical debate about this massive monument and its history.