A central street in Berlin is officially renamed on Saturday for an 18th century African philosopher after years of debate on its current name, Mohrenstrasse (“Morse ‘Street”), considered obsolete and offensive.
The Local Council of the Central District of Mitte announced for the first time in 2020 that it wanted to change the name of the street to Anton Wilhelm Amo Street, after the first black philosopher known for having taught in a German university.
The Mohrenstrasse metro station will also take the new name on Saturday, a date chosen to coincide with International Day for the memory of the slave trade.
“It is a great success for civil society, which has been pressure for a name change for over 30 years,” said Tahir Della, of the Decolonise Berlin group, who organizes celebrations to mark the name change.
“It is clear why the old name is so problematic for many blacks in Germany,” he said.
The origins of the current name are not clear.
It dates back to the beginning of the 18th century, the height of the slave trade in the Atlantic, and some suggested that he could refer to the former slaves who settled there.
Another theory is that it refers to an African diplomatic delegation on a visit.
Whatever its specific origins, Della said that the name is a “racist description for blacks”.
However, local residents have set up legal challenges against the Council in an attempt to arrest the rename.
On Friday, a last -minute judicial decision briefly threatened to derail the process, even after workers have already started to change the traffic signs.
However, a superior court canceled the decision a few hours later, allowing fame to move forward.
Born around 1700 in what is Ghana today, Anton Wilhelm Amo would have been sold as a slavery as a child and then brought to Europe.
Later, he had the opportunity to receive an education that brought him to the prestigious universities of Wittenberg, Halle and Jena, becoming an important figure of the period of illumination of Germany.
Decolonise Berlin says that the new name honors a symbol of “resistance, assertiveness and knowledge in the African diaspora”.
Della said that he hoped that the name change will serve as “momentum for additional discussions on public spaces”, pointing to debates on other street names in Berlin, honoring the figures of the colonial past of Germany.
