Annick Hagemann joins Joshua Kwesi Aikins for a local tour through Germany’s colonial past…
When I walk the streets of Berlin, I often wonder who they are named after. After all, every name has a story behind it even though most of the time we walk past oblivious.
After large events such as World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, many streets were renamed as they no longer reflected the principles of new governments or regimes; prominent examples include Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (which had been called Horst-Wessel-Platz after the Nazi martyr), Karl-Marx-Allee (which was Stalin Allee up until the death of the eponymous Soviet leader) and Danziger Strasse, which was formerly Dimitroff Strasse.
But while a process of reflection took place regarding this more recent past, Berlin still struggles to acknowledge its colonial history. Who walks across the Oberbaumbrücke into Kreuzberg on a Friday or Saturday night, for example, and asks themselves how the nearby May-Ayim-Ufer received its name? Would people know that until recently this street was named after an infamous German colonialist?
Or how many know the story behind Mohrenstrasse, let alone wonder if such a name conforms to the democratic principles of the German constitution? Most of us would not consider such things, and neither did I until I took a tour called Dauerkolonie Berlin with Joshua Kwesi Aikins.
The tour formed part of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse’s event series We Are Tomorrow to mark the 130th Anniversary of the Congo Conference which took place in Berlin in 1884-5.
The tour begins in the “Afrikanisches Viertel” in Wedding. The name reflects the ambitious ideas of Carl Hagenbeck, an investor who intended to establish a permanent “African Theme Park” in the area that exhibited animals and people imported from the German colonies.
As shocking as this might sound today, Hagenbeck had already toured his show around Germany and had received a lot of attention; indeed, the local zoo in Hamburg still bears his name today. World War I put an end to his plans, but the name for the area stuck.
Later, mostly during the Nazi regime, many streets were named after German “protectorates” (a euphemism for colonies), amongst them Togo and Cameroon. The names were intended to remind people of Germany’s short-lived but “glorious” days as a colonial power. G…