Iron Bismarck

From Broch's Sleepwalkers:
further, he would like to point out that the money for these lofty objects must be raised, and that in this connection an "Iron Bismarck," for instance, could be erected in the market-place, nails at ten pfennigs per nail,...  
And a footnote explains:
A wooden statue, into which the public were encouraged to hammer nails until the wood was covered.
 
***

Doesn't seem like the Bismarck statue ever existed, but the "nail men" were a historical reality and the most famous, according to Wiki, was probably the Iron Hindenburg (see image below).

 Nail Men or Men of Nails (German: Nagelmänner) were a form of propaganda and fundraising for members of the armed forces and their dependents in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire in World War I. They consisted of wooden statues (usually of knights in armour) into which nails were driven, either iron (black), or coloured silver or gold, in exchange for donations of different amounts. Some took different forms, including pillars, shields or local coats of arms and crosses, especially the Iron Cross, and in German there are a variety of alternate names for them, including Wehrmann in Eisen or eiserner Wehrmann (Iron Guardian), Nagelfigur, Nagelbild or Nagelbrett (Nail Figure or Nail-Bed), Wehrschild (Defence Shield) and Kriegswahrzeichen (War Monument). The most famous were the original Wehrmann in Eisen in Vienna and the 'Iron Hindenburg', a 12 metre (42 foot) statue of Hindenburg adjacent to the Victory Column in Berlin.

 
[From Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_Men]
 

 
 Iron Hindenberg
 
[From Wikimedia Commons:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eiserner_Hindenburg.jpg ]
 
 
 

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