OPENING: Thursday, 6 November at 6 pm
Speakers:
Dr Carola Brückner – District Councillor for Culture
Dr Urte Evert – Museum Director
Nora Richter – Curator
Spandau can look back on an intense history of special paths as a Berlin district, also with regard to the (re)naming of its street names.
The exhibition highlights specific examples, such as Jüdenstraße, Erich-Meier-Weg and Hans Carossa as namesakes. They tell us a lot about the turbulent past of this idiosyncratic Berlin district and how public memory is dealt with today. They bear witness to historical change over the ages, refer to people and events that have shaped the district, sometimes honouring problematic personalities or giving us a glimpse of medieval urban structures.
At the same time, renaming, for example after municipal mergers, after the Second World War and after reunification, has been sparking political and social debate for decades. Today, feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist principles are increasingly coming into focus – and are being negotiated in social debates.
And, of course, Spandau is not alone in these negotiation processes: as part of the project ‘Rename? !’, the twelve Berlin district museums, together with the Active Museum of Fascism and Resistance in Berlin e. V., are examining the history of street renaming throughout the city.
The exhibition is bilingual – German and English.
