William Cook

The battle over a German town’s black patron saint

The top of a fountain in Coburg depicts St Maurice (photo: iStock)

At first glance, the pretty German town of Coburg seems an unlikely arena for the latest skirmish in the culture wars. The birthplace of Prince Albert (and one of Queen Victoria’s favourite holiday spots), it’s a quaint and tranquil place which miraculously came through the last century virtually unscathed. Yet now this historic backwater finds itself at the centre of controversy, on account of its patron saint, St Maurice, aka the Coburg Moor.

St Maurice is a ubiquitous presence in Coburg. His profile adorns the town’s coat of arms, and numerous public buildings. It’s even on the manhole covers. Now Alisha Archie and Juliane Reuther (who live in Berlin but come from the region) have started a petition calling for this symbol to be redesigned. ‘It’s a racist portrayal,’ Ms Archie told German news channel Deutsche Welle. ‘It suggests that all black people and all Africans look the same.’

St Maurice was an Egyptian Christian who rose through the ranks of the Roman army. Sent to fight the Gauls, he refused to worship Roman gods or lead his men into battle against fellow Christians and was martyred for his faith. A familiar figure in Central Europe, he is also the patron saint of Savoy (in France) and Valais (in Switzerland) as well as soldiers and swordsmiths. Military orders in Latvia and Estonia also venerate his name.

Of course, what St Maurice actually looked like is a matter of complete conjecture, but – for better or worse – European artists have been depicting him as a black man ever since the Middle Ages. With the emergence of the transatlantic slave trade, such depictions apparently became less common – clearly, white Europeans didn’t want reminding that the people they were enslaving were really no different from this holy, heroic man.

One place where these antique depictions survived was Coburg, a landlocked town with scant connection with the slave trade.

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