Die Lucy-Lameck-Straße in Neukölln

Since November 2020, a street adjacent to Hasenheide Park has been named after Lucy Lameck (1934-21.3.1993).

Lucy Lameck was a fighter for Tanzanian independence and one of the first female members of parliament in the Tanzanian government cabinet. In Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, she is still honoured by the "Lucy Lameck Road".

It was a long way to be honoured in Berlin's urban space: for almost 131 years, the street was named after the war and colonial criminal Hermann von Wissmann (1853-1905).

In November 1890, what was then Rixdorf was the first municipality in Germany to name a street after Hermann von Wissmann. In the same year, Wissmann – as Reich Commissioner for "German East Africa" (today: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda) – was ennobled by Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged military "achievements" in the German colony. [1]

Born in 1853, Hermann von Wissmann was already involved in military expeditions in Africa in the 1880s – including for the Belgian King Leopold II, who established a brutal colonial regime in the Congo. [2] When the East African coastal population rebelled against German colonization in 1888, Wissmann was tasked with crushing this resistance as Reich Commissioner.

His actions were criticized as extremely brutal even by some contemporary observers. They described that Wissmann "wants to hang everything" and threatened resistant villages "to let them disappear from the map." [3] Executions, kidnappings, rapes, looting and pillaging were the order of the day. In 1895, Wissmann was appointed governor of the colony of "German East Africa" for one year. In this function, he prepared, among other things, the taxation of colonized people. This measure was one of the reasons for the Maji-Maji War, in which resistance to German colonization was again offered from 1905 to 1907. The German side reacted with brutal severity: between 150,000 and 300,000 Africans were killed. [4]

Against this historical background, activists and organizations from the Tanzanian community have been campaigning for the renaming of Wissmannstraße for over 15 years. Supported by the then Werkstatt der Kulturen, which was based in Wissmannstraße, a memorial march was organized in 2005 to commemorate the Maji-Maji War, which began 100 years ago in the former colony of "German East Africa". As part of this memorial march, the first symbolic renaming of the street took place. [5] In the years that followed, the desire for the street to be renamed was repeatedly articulated at funeral marches, events and city tours. Instead of a colonial criminal, Neukölln was to honor a person with a connection to German colonial history who had actively campaigned against colonialism and racism. [6] Bündnis 90/Die Grünen also campaigned for a renaming together with the postcolonial and anti-racist initiatives.

At the institutional level, this did not become concrete until spring 2018, when the Neukölln district council initiated a dialogue process with the residents of Wissmannstraße. It was proposed to name the street after a woman who "lived and/or worked in Neukölln or had a connection to the topic of anti-colonialism". [7] In the summer of the following year, a participation process for the renaming began. After a public call, Neukölln residents were able to submit corresponding name suggestions.

From the several hundred proposals, a jury of representatives of the residents of Wissmannstraße, historians and representatives of postcolonial initiatives agreed on three name suggestions: Nduna Mkomanile, Fasia Jansen and Lucy Lameck. [8]

Nduna Mkomanile played a significant role in the anti-colonial struggle in the Maji-Maji War, and Fasia Jansen was an Afro-German political singer-songwriter and peace activist.

Lucy Lameck was a fighter for Tanzanian independence and one of the first female members of the Tanzanian Parliament. Her life is closely linked to Tanzania's colonial history. When she was born in 1934 in poorer circumstances, what is now Tanzania was a mandate territory of the League of Nations under British administration. After graduating from school, she trained as a nurse. Early on, she experienced racial discrimination in the colonial system: "We were treated more or less like a pile of bananas, as if we didn't exist, as if we weren't human."[9] She refused to work in the colonial-racist system and became politically active early on, which she describes in an interview: "So it's the accumulation of all these factors... And when you see things and start to reject the system, you start to wonder if there is a better world or a better life." [10]

After studying shorthand, Lucy Lameck became a member of the Taganyika African National Union (TANU), which fought for Tanzanian independence, and soon headed the party's women's association. From 1957, she studied economics and politics at Oxford on a scholarship. After another semester at a university in the USA, she returned to her home country in 1960 – one year before Tanzania's independence.

She continued her work with TANU and was nominated for parliament by the first president of independent Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. This made her one of the first members of parliament and the first woman in the country's government cabinet. [11]

In her more than 20 years as a parliamentarian, she was particularly committed to the rights of women and girls and initiated significant bills to improve their social status. [12] She constantly emphasized the important but often marginalized role that Tanzanian women had played in the struggle for the country's independence. Even though the fight for women's rights did not end with independence, her position had improved greatly: "Before independence: Who could I talk to? Who would listen to me? I couldn't even snoop around near the parliament. I couldn't even be around, no one wanted to listen to me. Now that there is a possibility, there are some women in parliament, and I hope there will be more and more..."[13]

Lucy Lameck was an important pioneer of the pan-African idea. In 1965, she gave her well-known speech entitled "Africans Are Not Poor", in which she argued that Tanzania was not poor and rather emphasized the future potentials and actual wealth of the entire continent. [14] What made her feel poor was the situation of the world, which was developing rapidly scientifically and economically.

Lucy Lameck herself struggled to develop a social vision that reflected African realities and values, rather than simply imitating "the West". [15] In comparison with other countries, however, it should always be remembered that "the British, the Americans and the others built their countries out of the sweat of other people." [16]

In Berlin-Neukölln, the Committee for Education, Schools and Culture recommended to the district council in November 2020 that Lucy Lameck be accepted as the new namesake of the street. The renaming was decided with the majority of votes of the SPD, the Left Party and Bündnis90/Die Grünen. [17] It was carried out on 21 April 2021 by the district mayor Martin Hikel, the Tanzanian activist Mnyaka Sururu Mboro of Berlin Postkolonial and the Ambassador of the United Republic of Tanzania Dr. Abdallah Possi. [18]

The fact that Lucy Lameck, who is described as a "heroine who led the anti-colonial struggle in Tanzania"[19] instead of a colonial criminal, is being honored in Neukölln today is due in particular to the years of commitment of activists and organizations – especially from the Tanzanian community. Criticism of the renaming came from the FDP, the CDU and the AfD. While the FDP criticized Lucy Lameck as the new namesake, the other parties and a citizens' initiative rejected the renaming completely. One of the accusations is that history is erased in this way. [20] On the contrary, the aim is to preserve the memory of German colonial history, but to make a radical change of perspective: instead of colonial criminals, people in Berlin's urban space who resisted colonialism are to be honored. [21]

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Mnyaka Sururu Mboro and Christian Kopp from Berlin Postkolonial e. V. for the discussions and suggestions.