William Cook

Berlin’s underground is the latest battleground in Germany’s culture war

Mohrenstrasse subway station has been the target of BLM protestors (Getty images)

By the time I got to Mohrenstrasse, the protesters and their BLM placards were long gone. The only thing they’d left behind was some red paint, splattered on the sign above the subway station. I guess this was meant to imply that by naming this U-Bahn station Mohrenstrasse, Berlin’s public transport bigwigs had blood on their hands, or something. But today, in the pale autumn sunlight, it actually looked rather attractive and artistic. I hope they keep it there.

For this subway sign to remain here, albeit with a light splattering of red paint upon it, would, to my mind, be a good solution to a problem that’s dogged Berlin’s U-Bahn network for years: namely, how to tackle the protestors who claim that the name Mohrenstrasse (Street of the Moors) is racist.

Yet maintaining this historic name is no longer a long-term option, for Berlin has now bowed to pressure from anti-colonial activists, and decided to rename the street from which this station takes its name. Mohrenstrasse will be renamed Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Strasse, after Germany’s first black philosopher. Welcome to the latest battleground in Germany’s culture wars.

The renaming of Mohrenstrasse is a rich irony, for the original name of this city centre street was only relatively recently reinstated. During the Cold War, this street was in Communist East Berlin, and the East Germans renamed it Otto Grotewohl Strasse, after East Germany’s first prime minister, a name which became unacceptable after the Berlin Wall came down.

Equally ironic, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, which runs the city’s subway system, had proposed to rename the station Glinkastrasse, after an adjoining street, which commemorates the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. This plan was scuppered, however, when Glinka was (posthumously) accused of anti-Semitism. And so the search for a suitable name goes on.

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