There's a new name in town to diversify Berlin's streets
10 July 2024
When African-American writer and professor Audre Lorde first came to Berlin in 1984, she famously said: "Where are the Black Germans?" 40 years later, on 28 June, she got her own street. Berlin's Manteuffelstraße – named after the 19th-century Prussian royalist Otto Theodor von Manteuffel – was officially renamed to Audre-Lorde-Straße in honour of the late American civil rights and LGBTQ+ activist. But what does an American activist have to do with Germany?
In the last eight years of her life, Audre Lorde played a pivotal role in the Afro-German and Black German women's movement. She also helped publish historian Katharina Oguntoye's anthology 'Farbe bekennen' (Showing Our Colours), the first book written from the Black perspective tracing Afro-German history from the Prussian Empire to post-World War II.
 | Emma de Ruiter Renaming streets is intended to better reflect society's diversity in public space. However, the process faces many bureaucratic hurdles. Across Europe, a lack of diversity remains present in street names. On average, 91% of streets named after individuals are still called after men. Stockholm has the best track record, with 19.5% of its streets named after women, followed by Copenhagen (13.4%) and Berlin (12.1%). |
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