At the time of Waterloo, the Electorate of Hanover was a possession of the monarch of the United Kingdom, and Hanoverian troops took a major role at Waterloo. The Waterloosäule, or Waterloo column, was designed by the Hanover court architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves (1788–1864), and erected on the Waterlooplatz, on the south-western outskirts of the city, between 1825 and 1832. Its panels record the names of the fallen, from both the King’s German Legion and other regiments of Hanoverian troops, under the banner ‘Den Siegern von Waterloo, das dankbare Vaterland’ (‘The victors of Waterloo, the grateful fatherland’). Although surrounded by military armouries and barracks that were severely damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War, the column survived intact, bearing witness to an earlier era in which a coalition of powers was united against expansionist militarism.