The Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) wanted to be a pioneer. Under the impression of the discussion about racism, which developed after the death of the African-American George Floyd by police violence also in Germany, the company chose the beginning of the month, the U-Bahnhof “Mohrenstraße” to rename. With the repayment of the allegedly discriminatory word “Mohr” did you want to set a sign against racism. However, the Berlin Senate stopped the renaming, which should be done soon. “Quick shots are not appropriate in such matters really is,” said business Senator, Ramona Pop (Green). She had even celebrated the announcement of the LPP as a “clear sign against discrimination,” and “just right”. Similarly, Federal Minister for family Affairs, Franziska Giffey, also a designated new SPD state boss in Berlin had praised the renaming as a “great characters of the LOB against racism, hatred and Incitement”.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

F. A. Z. Twitter

But suddenly the thing is not so easy anymore. This is partly due to the new name, the BVG had provided. “Glinka street” should be the name of the Station in the future, as the road that runs there. However, the name of the donor, the Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857) was a great Russian Nationalist, as such, of Poland, hostile and anti-Semitic-minded. In any case, the appropriate Expressions of Glinka’s are known, the designated such composer colleagues as “too Jewish” or even as “impudent Jew”. However, the GDR, introduced in 1951, the name of the street as a homage to the great Soviet brother nation had seen on the shadow side of the Russian composer over studiously.

The pure case with Glinka is only one side of the criticism of the approach of the BVG. In addition, activists in the black Community to speak-and those who want to see a critical treatment of the German colonial history in Africa in a renaming of street names in Berlin, manifested. They propose the name “Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-road” for the U-Bahn Station. The first known philosopher and legal scholar of African descent who lived between 1703 and about 1757. He was a former slave, the trafficked, under nobles “given away”, as a “chamber of Mohr” was inherited. Amo was finally baptized, and enjoyed at the court of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, an excellent education, which led him to the University of Halle. His first Disputation in Latin, wore translated the title “On the legal status of the Moors in Europe”.