Cologne Marian Column

The impulse came from the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1854, which prompted intensified Marian devotion in many places. As early as April 1855, a society formed in strongly Catholic Cologne to erect a statue of Maria Immaculata. The plan was not uncontested: newspaper voices called it impractical, and some suggested building a hospital instead as a more active form of devotion. Tensions between the city's population and its Prussian administration added to the friction, for the city was at the same time planning a monumental equestrian statue of King Friedrich Wilhelm III — the secular protector on one side, Mary as religious guardian of city and archdiocese on the other.

On 2 June 1857, some 25,000 people attended the laying of the foundation stone; by May 1858 the column was finished. Its consecration followed only in September 1858, on the occasion of the 10th General Assembly of Germany's Catholic associations.

In its Neo-Gothic form the column resembles a piece of Cologne Cathedral: the deliberate return to the pre-Reformation Middle Ages underlined the monument's Catholic character. Over a polygonal ground plan rise three storeys that merge into one another. The lowest opens to the north as a tabernacle, while the other sides bear coats of arms of Pope Pius IX, the city of Cologne, and Archbishop Johannes von Geissel. The second storey forms four open niches holding seated prophet figures, among them Ezekiel and Jeremiah with scrolls. Above them, pinnacles lead to the slender tip of the pier, crowned by a wreath of winged angel heads. The figure of Mary is depicted as the Immaculata: standing upright, with a serpent and a crescent moon at her feet, hands spread in blessing and a metal wreath of stars around her head. The monument is enclosed by a wrought-iron railing, renewed in the 1980s after the old model.