This monument is in memory of a moving emigration story. Aged just 12, Christian Elsen from Medendorf left his homeland in 1882 to go and join his uncle, who had emigrated to the USA. In adverse circumstances, he saved up enough to pay for his parents and siblings to cross over to America too, which they duly did ten years after he himself had arrived. At the beginning of the 1920s, he decided to revisit the Eifel and erect a monument in honour of Mary at the place where his parental home had stood. The granite blocks were worked in the USA and transported to today's location by ship, rail and horse-drawn carriage.
