Berlin's relationship with its colonial history is being reconsidered, despite opposition from far-right politicians and some disgruntled locals unhappy at plans to change the names of their streets.

In January, the German capital is launching a new five-year project named "Postcolonial Remembrance in the City" to reframe its postcolonial past, coinciding with the renaming of two streets and a square in the district of Wedding.

The project, co-organized by the Berlin City Museum and three NGOs, will involve five years of events and exhibitions across the city, as well as an annual festival dedicated to "decolonial perspectives" and an online map marking points of interest around the city.

Tahir Della helped organize Berlin's new initiative

One of the NGOs involved with the project is the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black People in Germany) (ISD), which sees the issue as more relevant than ever.

"Migration is now being seen in connection with postcolonial history," ISD spokesman Tahir Della told DW. "The former colony countries never really became independent. There are still dependent relationships between the global north and the global south that have their origin in the colonization projects, and which have led to consequences like migration."

Read more: Recognizing Germany colonial crimes: Work in progress

Freedom fighters replace colonial leaders

The renaming of three streets in Wedding — Petersallee, Nachtigalplatz, and Lüderitzstrasse — has been a major issue for the ISD and other organizations in the last several years, with local authorities making the decision to look for new names in 2016. The move has not been without controversy: some 500 local residents filed complaints against the name changes, delaying the process.

All three places now being renamed are in Wedding's so-called African Quarter, where 25 streets and squares have associations with Africa: some are simply named after countries and cities, though others, including the three above, are named after German colonial officials who were instrumental in driving Germany's colonization of East Africa in the 1880s and 1890s, often with military force.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history 'Our future is on the water' Under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Germany's colonial empire was established on territories in present-day Namibia, Cameroon, Togo, parts of Tanzania and Kenya. Emperor Wilhelm II, crowned in 1888, sought to further expand colonial possessions by establishing new fleets (picture). The German Empire wanted its "place in the sun," declared a later chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, in 1897.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history German colonies Acquisitions were made in the Pacific (North New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, Marshall and Solomon Islands, Samoa) and in China (Tsingtao). A conference in Brussels in 1890 determined that the German Empire would obtain the kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi, connecting them to German East Africa. By the end of the 19th century, Germany's colonial conquests were largely completed.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history A system of inequality The "white" population in the colonies was a small, highly privileged minority - rarely more than one percent of the population. In 1914, about 25,000 Germans lived in the colonies, slightly less than half of them in German South-West Africa. The 13 million natives in the German colonies were seen as subordinates, with no access to legal recourse.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history The first genocide of the 20th century The genocide against the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) is the most serious crime in Germany's colonial history. During the Battle of Waterberg in 1904, most Herero rebels escaped into the desert, where German troops systematically blocked their access to water. More than 60,000 Herero are estimated to have perished.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history German crime Only about 16,000 Herero survived the extermination campaign. They were then detained in concentration camps, where many more died. The exact number of victims was never established and remains a point of controversy. How long did these emaciated Herero survive after fleeing through the desert? At any rate, they had lost all personal possessions, livelihood and future perspectives.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Colonial war with far-reaching consequences From 1905 to 1907, a broad alliance of ethnic groups rose against colonial rule in German East Africa. An estimated 100,000 locals died in the Maji-Maji Rebellion. Although hardly ever discussed in Germany afterwards, it remains an important chapter in the history of Tanzania.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Reforms in 1907 In the aftermath of the colonial wars, administration in the German colonies was restructured with the aim of improving living conditions there. Bernhard Dernburg, a successful entrepreneur (pictured being carried in German East Africa), was appointed Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs in 1907 and introduced reforms in Germany's colonial policies.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Science and the colonies Along with Dernburg's reforms, scientific and technical institutions were established to deal with colonial issues, creating faculties at today's universities of Hamburg and Kassel. In 1906, Robert Koch directed a long expedition to East Africa to investigate the transmission of sleeping sickness. Pictured above are microscopic specimens collected there.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Colonies lost Defeated in World War I, Germany signed the peace treaty in Versailles in 1919 specifiying that the country would renounce sovereignty over its colonies. Posters like this depicted Germans' consequent fear of lost economic power, poverty and misery in the homeland.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Colonial ambitions of the Third Reich Colonial aspirations resurged under the Nazis - and not just the ones laid out in the "Generalplan Ost," which outlined the colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by means of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The Nazis also aimed to recover the country's lost African colonies, as is evident in this school map from 1938. They were to provide resources to Germany.

Racist, ruthless, cruel: Germany's colonial history Thorny process Negotiations for a joint declaration on the genocide of the Herero and Nama are now entering a difficult phase. While Germany stalls when it comes to financial compensation, there are also shortcomings in the internal political structures of Namibia. Herero representatives recently filed a formal complaint to the UN to object their exclusion from the current negotiations. Author: Julia Hitz (eg)



The most notorious of the three is Carl Peters, who first went to East Africa in the 1880s when he founded the German East Africa Company and bought parcels of land in what is now Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. He did this mainly by agreeing so-called "Schutzverträge," or "protection contracts," which gave the locals military protection from neighboring tribes in exchange for what amounted to total control of their country.

Peters was later named imperial high commissioner of East Africa, earning the Swahili nickname "mkono wa damu," or "the man with the bloody hand," for his brutal reputation. Eventually recalled by the Reich for his excessive cruelty, Peters was rehabilitated by the Nazi regime, which made a film about his life and named Berlin's Petersallee in 1939.

Petersallee is to be renamed after the Maji Maji Rebellion against German rule

In April 2018, Wedding authorities decided to honor three African postcolonial activists with the new street names. Petersallee is to be divided into Anna-Mungunda-Allee and Maji-Maji-Allee, named after a Namibian independence campaigner and the anti-imperialist rebellion that began in East Africa in 1905.

Lüderitzstrasse will become Cornelius-Fredericks-Strasse, after a southwest African tribal leader, and Nachtigalplatz is to become Manga-Bell-Platz, named after a Cameroonian anti-colonialist leader.

Read more: Looted colonial art: Germany to set up new contact office

Right-wing resistance

The move has been met with resistance from Germany's far right. In December, two lawmakers from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) invited US historian Bruce Gilley to Berlin to deliver a lecture on German colonialism. Gilley, author of the controversial 2017 article "The Case for Colonialism," argued that the German Reich was more benevolent than many others, and brought better security and economic stability to East Africa.

"This shows that the political right is trying to minimize this issue," said Della. "When people say we need a more nuanced look at colonialism, in the end it always means that the crimes that happened in connection with imperialism get minimized and relativized. It means pretending that these crimes against humanity had positive aspects."

German imperialist history has also often been overlooked in part because the size of its empire remained relatively small, compared to the empires of other European powers, including Britain, France, the Netherlands and Spain.

This, according to Della, does nothing to diminish Germany's crimes. "We just have to look at who committed the first genocide of the 20th century: that was Germany in Namibia, and Germany has up to now failed to properly take responsibility for that," he said.

The city of Berlin itself became a major part of African colonial history in 1884, when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck hosted the infamous Berlin Conference which regulated Europe's colonization in Africa, and which opened the gates to a period of intense imperialist activity.

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