On the Paul Robeson Strasse

Eiliyas Mixtape Menage investigates the relationship between U.S. entertainer and activist Paul Robeson and the GDR…

“You may well ask why Paul Robeson means so much to our people. Why do we have a Paul Robeson committee or a Paul Robeson Archive? Why do our school children learn about him and why is he an inspiration to us on our road to communism? I am not sure that I have the whole answer to these questions. But surely one reason is what we learned from the terrible experiences under fascism. “

—Frank Loeser, President of East Germany’s Paul Robeson Committee, Ansprache zur Veranstaltung “What Is America To Me,” August 2, 1973, 19:30, Kosmos Theater

I can distinctly remember the two times that I encountered Pankow’s Paul Robeson Strasse. The first time was on my third day in Berlin, when I had found a potential artist studio. Determined to make Berlin my own I ventured out somewhere I didn’t know in the city (it might have been the Kreativstadt Weissensee, ECC, but I don’t remember exactly). The studio turned out to be too far away from where I lived in Mitte at the time, but on my way back, bearing in mind I was very new to the city, I got lost.

In the midst of my wandering around, I stumbled across Paul Robeson Strasse. I had to double take, of course. Why was there a street named after Paul Robeson here in Berlin? I wondered if it maybe commemorated a different Paul Robeson to the one I thinking of, the singer, dancer and activist from back home in the USA.

Then it clicked. I remembered a documentary I had watched on Paul Robeson, which mentioned him being revered in East Berlin, and how he had said that it was in Russia he felt appreciated as a human being for the first time. Obviously I was in the eastern part of Berlin, and the street must therefore be a nod to Robeson’s communist sympathies.

The second time I found myself on the same street was more than a year later and also accidentally. I had signed my young son up for piano lessons in this particular part of Pankow, and remember sticking around for the first lesson to make sure he was comfortable with the new teacher. Partway through though, I ventured out for a coffee to give him some space, more focus and perhaps a sense of independence. I picked up a coffee and a snack, and wandered about the neighbourhood; before I knew it, I was back on Paul Robeson Strasse again.

Who was Paul Robeson?

Paul Leroy Robeson was born on April 9th 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, to Reverend William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. His father was a runaway slave who escaped to become minister of Princeton’s Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church. His mother came from a prominent family of Quaker origin. He was the youngest of five children, and grew up to be a lot of things; athlete, lawyer, singer, thespian, left-wing activist. It was that last one that got him into trouble and turned him into a target of the U.S. government. 

A part of his enthusiasm for communism stemmed from the case of the Scottsboro Boys case in Alabama, in which nine Black teenagers were accused, tried and convicted of raping two white women. With the help of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the case was appealed. They were defended by CPUSA’s International Labor Defense (ILD), was was led by Robeson’s good friend William L. Patterson, and launched a global campaign, catching the attention of Moscow in particular, and catapulted Jim Crow into an international concern.