The cool blue tunnel of Afrikanische Strasse U-Bahn station is embellished with enormous colour photographs: a grinning giraffe; a herd of zebras on the savannah; a pair of meerkats. The scene they set feels very far away: above ground, Afrikanisches Viertel (the “African Quarter”) is just an ordinary Berlin neighbourhood of modernist housing estates, small businesses and a relatively low-income population. Only the names of the roads – Zanzibar Street, Congo Street, Cameroon Street – seem to be playing along. There is no zoo here, and Africans make up only 6% of the population.

But beyond these contradictions, the African Quarter has become the epicentre of a passionate debate about historical memory and the city landscape. On one side are those who want the area to remain as it is; on the other, a growing number of activists and organisations calling for the neighbourhood (and some streets beyond it) to be renamed.

“This is a debate about how to handle the much-neglected history of German colonialism,” says Tahir Della, director of the Initiative of Black People in Germany NGO and an advocate of renaming. Della and others recently held a lively mock renaming ceremony in one road, creating alternative street signs of their own, and attracting signatures for a petition to get rid of the old names.

Abdel Amine Mohammed holds up an alternative street sign honouring the Tanzanian politician Lucy Lameck. Photograph: Daniel Rodriguez

The debate has echoes of the recent controversy over Rhodes Must Fall, in which many argued that statues of Cecil Rhodes at universities from Cape Town to Oxford should be torn down due to his being a British colonialist and outspoken racist. Others claimed they should stay, citing his legacy as a generous benefactor and the need to protect free speech from those who might find it offensive.

Carl Hagenbeck devised a grand plan for Berlin: a permanent zoo that would exhibit both wild animals and humans

The history of the African Quarter goes back to the late 19th century, when the animal trader Carl Hagenbeck devised a grand plan for Berlin: a permanent zoo that would exhibit both wild animals and humans. Even before it hosted the 1884-5 Berlin Conference at which European imperial powers wrangled for control of Africa, Germany had enthusiastically embraced the spirit of colonialism. Hagenbeck’s zoo would be a celebration of the German colonial project and its spoils, from German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) to German East Africa (present-day Burundi, Rwanda and mainland Tanzania). It would build on the success of his “exotic peoples” exhibits (Völkerschau) all over Europe. Hagenbeck died from a snake bite in 1913, and the aftermath of the first world war thwarted his proposal for good. But by then the African Quarter had emerged as a permanent fixture of the city landscape, with its roads and squares named after African countries and German colonial heroes.

Animal collector Carl Hagenbeck with his sons and a Bengal tiger, 1907. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

“It’s a slap in the face for black people every time they walk through these streets honouring those who committed the most serious of crimes in Africa,” says Della, referring to the likes of Petersallee – originally named after the colonial administrator Carl Peters, a man so violent he earned the nicknames “Hangman Peters” and “Bloody Hands”, as well as the admiration of Adolf Hitler.

65,000 Herero people and half of the smaller Nama tribe were killed when they rose up against oppressive colonial rule

Forced to give up its colonial experiment after the first world war, Germany left most of the ugly details behind – but it held, for a time, colonies in present-day Namibia, Togo, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and Mozambique as well as parts of present-day Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria. German explorers and settlers lynched and enslaved men, raped women and girls, and starved entire peoples to death in concentration camps.

In present-day Namibia, some 65,000 Herero people and half of the smaller Nama tribe were killed after they rose up against oppressive colonial rule in 1904-5.. But “most Germans could not even tell you that the country was once a colonial occupier in Africa,” says Tanzanian-born activist Mnyaka Sururu Mboro, a member of the NGO Postkolonial, which is based in the area and campaigns for the renaming of its streets, as well as for official monuments to the victims of colonialism to be erected in German cities.

Even in a city that seems to specialise in monuments and memorialisation, Germany’s colonial past, and with it the history behind the African Quarter, had until recently slipped out of public consciousness. “While Germany is often praised for its critical engagement with its Nazi history, it still struggles to acknowledge that the Holocaust was preceded by this history of overseas colonialism and genocide,” says Sinthujan Varatharajah, a German scholar of political geography.

Namibian activists await the return of skulls of Herero and Nama people killed under German colonial rule, Windhoek, 2011. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Many of those in favour of maintaining the street names say it is precisely this “historical amnesia” that they are fighting against. Karina Fulusch is a spokesperson for Pro Afrikanisches Viertel (PAV), a residents’ organisation who oppose what they say is a “politicised and ideological” debate around the street names. She cites local resident Johann Ganz: “The simple disappearance of controversial street names from the cityscape does not do away with the need for a deep-reaching discussion about Germany’s colonial legacy.”

“The argument that renaming would wipe out this part of history shows how little the people who are against the renaming know what they are advocating for,” responds Tahir Della. Although PAV points in its arguments to the historical heritage and touristic value of the African Quarter as it is, many of Berlin’s streets have, of course, already been renamed many times – during the rise of the Nazis, after their fall, and on either side of the Berlin Wall.

As well as precedent, there are plenty of more deserving honorees, say campaigners, such as the black writers WEB Du Bois and Audre Lorde, both of whom studied in Germany. “Black people have been part of life in Germany for centuries,” says political scientist and antiracism activist Jamie Schearer-Udeh. “I wish that black children here could also know about the positive milestones in black German history.”

Herero men in chains in the colony of German South-West Africa. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

There have already been some concessions towards the renaming of the streets. In 1986 the local government took the unusual step of rededicating Petersallee while maintaining its original name. Instead of Carl Peters, it would now commemorate an anti-Nazi resistance figure , Dr Hans Peters. At the crossroads where it intersects with Afrikanische Strasse, a tiny plaque bearing the name of the new honouree was attached to the street sign. Renaming campaigners call it a cheat; they were also not content with a double-sided sign erected at the south end of the area, offering two competing versions of the neighbourhood’s history.

They had more cause to celebrate when the Kreuzberg neighbourhood’s Gröbenufer, originally honouring a 17th-century slave trader, was renamed after the Afro-German poet May Ayim in 2010. Meanwhile, there has been ongoing debate about Mohrenstrasse U-Bahn station: “Mohr” translates literally as “moor” and is considered an unacceptable term.

The debate around Afrikanisches Viertel has gone more public in recent months. A local MP has set up a jury to discuss renaming the streets, and the issue has reached the national press, with editorials mostly, though not exclusively, in favour. Some of those on the side of renaming have even papered over street names with their own suggestions, provoking the ire of local residents. Groups on both sides have published blog posts, and some offer tours of the area and its history. Whatever the outcome, Schearer-Udeh believes these conversations are necessary and long overdue: “Discussing changing the street names has forced a public debate about a chapter that is not well known, and might help change the perception that German colonialism was not that bad.”

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