Third and last part of an article discussing Imperia, the large concrete statue of a semi-fictional medieval sex worker.  Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

A Clandestine Erection

Imperia went up in April 1993, and I won’t even try to explain the insane backstory. 

Short version: some people Constance wanted a cool statue to add luster to the waterfront.  Most of them were thinking of something like a Statue of Liberty.  A minority, however, had a more subversive idea.  And those guys picked Peter Lenk, a sculptor with a reputation.  But when the City Council of these fairly conservative small German city saw the plans… you can probably guess how that went over.  There was, let us say, some pushback.

But Lenk and his allies went ahead and put up Imperia anyway.  The statue was prefabricated and shipped to the harbor in pieces.  Most of the construction happened in a single night, between midnight and dawn. 

So Constance woke up to Imperia, and… honestly, it wasn’t love at first sight.  “Bemusement” was one common reaction.  “Disgust” and “outrage” were up there too.  

Part of it was, of course, that she’s a gigantic sex worker.  Another part is that she was satirizing something that happened almost six hundred years previous, which even in Germany is not exactly front page news.  And of course, there were her let’s say attributes,


[there are a lot of photos of her from this angle for some reason]

plus the fact that she was holding a naked Pope in one hand.  Constance is a pretty Catholic town, and the whole “naked Pope” thing didn’t really go over well.

[click to continue…]