Berlin to change street names which honor brutal colonial past

TheLocal.de ^ | 12 April 2018 14:57 CEST+02:00 | AFP

[Olog-hai]

Berlin is poised to strip the names of streets linked to atrocities committed during its occupation of Namibia and dedicate them to liberation fighters, part of a late reckoning with Germany’s brutal colonial history.

After more than a decade of debate, the three main parties in the Berlin Mitte district assembly voted late Wednesday to recommend new names for streets in the so-called African Quarter in the northwest of the German capital, spokeswoman Melita Ersek said. […]

The motion to drop the names associated with bloody suppression of Namibia during Germany’s 1884-1919 occupation of what was then called German South West Africa marks a long-delayed victory for local activists. […]

Interestingly, Namibia appears to have less of a problem with the names of German imperial figures remaining a part of its geography. A harbor town in the southwest of the country is called Lüderitz; the town was named in honor of Adolf Lüderitz in 1886. Wedding, for its part, was named for 12^th century nobleman Rudolf de Weddinge.

“The African Quarter still glorifies colonialism and its crimes,” council members from the Greens, Social Democrats and Linke parties said in their joint motion. “That conflicts with our understanding of democracy and does lasting harm to the image of the city of Berlin.” …

[DIRTYSECRET]

Germany came of age in 1871 and was a lat comer to colonial conquests.

[mfish13]

Next thing you know, they be tearing down statues of Lee and Jackson.

[Bonemaker]

“Germany came of age in 1871 and was a lat comer to colonial conquests.”

And all those African colonies are so much better off now that the European colonists are gone. After all, who needs electricity, paved roads, indoor plumbing, hospitals, schools etc.?

[dfwgator]

After all, who needs electricity, paved roads, indoor plumbing, hospitals, schools etc.?

"Other than that, what have the Europeans ever done for us?"

[9422WMR]

You left out having a written language!! LOL

[shanover]

Colonialism was the best thing to happen to most of the world because when they became independent, they actually became worse off without the Colonial overlords. There are many reasons for that and I do not endorse Colonialism because America was once a colony but we are the exception to the rule of what good can happen when a colony(s) declare independence. The irony is that we have spilled so much blood in former colonies.

[kearnyirish2]

For what its worth, I wouldn’t put colonialism in much of the Americas in the same category as that throughout the Third World because there was a significant difference: The independence movements were led by people from the colonizer. Asian and African countries demanded independence for their native peoples; the American colonies of England, Spain, and Portugal demanded independence for their European settlers (the natives played little role in the movements; probably participated most noticeably in Mexico).