Diederichs's stone

The Diederichsstein was a monument in then-German Tsingtao, dedicated in 1898 on the first anniversary of Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs's seizure of the Kiautschou bay. Prince Heinrich of Prussia spoke at the unveiling; the inscription praised Diederichs as the man who won land for emperor and empire. After Japan took Tsingtao in 1914 the monument lost its political meaning, and under later Chinese administration it was removed. Nothing on the site marks it now; the Diederichsstein survives only in old photographs and the archives of the former German Colonial Society as a trace of a short-lived German chapter in East Asia.