The so-called Boer Quarter

Street names always indicate the conjunctures of political regimes and public commemoration. In Karlshorst, this becomes clear in the example of the so-called Burenviertel. It was located around the former Burenringstraße, at the level of today's Römerweg.

The conflict between the Dutch colonists (called "Boers"), who had occupied the region around the Cape of Good Hope since the 17th century, and the later British colonists escalated after the discovery of mineral resources such as gold and diamonds at the end of the 19th century. While the European settlers had already increasingly destroyed the habitats and foundations of the indigenous population in the areas of southern Africa, it was now a matter of exploiting mineral resources. This conflict led to a war between the British colonial army and Boer militias from 1899 to 1902. The British side won and subsequently consolidated its power over the entire territory occupied by colonizers of European origin. Indigenous groups that had initially joined British troops in the hope of greater rights were disappointed. [1]

The German public did not see the conflict as a dispute between two colonial societies over resources on foreign territory. Rather, they attributed the role of David in his fight against Goliath Great Britain to the Boers. The Boer generals Christiaan de Wet (1854–1922) and Louis Botha (1862–1919) were honored around 1905 by naming streets during the expansion of the Karlshorst settlement. [2]

Between 1905 and 1976, Siegfried-Widera-Straße was called "Dewetallee" and Rudolf-Grosse-Straße "Bothaallee". While it was not until 1976 that Dewetallee was given the name of a GDR border soldier who was fatally injured in an incident at the Berlin Wall in 1963,[3] Bothaallee was soon renamed again. In 1915, Louis Botha had been involved in the conquest of the German colony "German South West Africa" as commander of South African forces on the side of Great Britain. Botha had also participated in the suppression of a pro-German uprising by Boer army members. As a result, he fell out of favor in Germany. In 1922, Bothaallee was named after Victor Franke (1866–1936). Franke had been a member of the "Imperial Protection Force" in "German South West Africa" since 1896 and was actively involved in the genocide of the Hereros. Later, as commander of the "Schutztruppe", he signed the instrument of surrender to Botha. Since 1976, the street has been named after Rudolf Grosse (1905–1942), a communist resistance fighter against the National Socialist regime. After a long imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Grosse was murdered by the SS in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. [4] In 1995, Dewetallee, which had been called Siegfried-Widera-Straße in the meantime, was given its current name Rheinpfalzallee.

A third street in the same part of Karlshorst was also named after a Boer leader until 1976: Ohm-Krüger-Straße. Today's Johannes-Zoschke-Straße bore the name of the former president of the Republic of Transvaal in present-day South Africa for seven decades after 1908. The Republic of Transvaal was a colonial state in which the indigenous population was exploited. Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, known as "Ohm Krüger" (Uncle Krüger), was one of its founders and had campaigned abroad for support against the British during the Boer War. He found advocates in the German Reich, including with Kaiser Wilhelm II personally. Hans Zoschke was executed as a Nazi resistance fighter in 1942 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison. [5]