The monument is located on the Kreuzberg hill in the Victoria Park in the Tempelhofer Vorstadt, a region within Berlin's borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. The monument was conceived at a time of deteriorating relations between the reactionaries and the reformers of the civic movement within Prussia. The monument is of cast iron, a technique en vogue at the time. Its younger socket brick building is faced with grey Silesian granite and was designed by the Prussian architect Heinrich Strack and realised by the Prussian engineer Johann Wilhelm Schwedler. Its centerpiece is a tapering turret of 60 Prussian feet (), resembling the spire tops of Gothic churches.