Qualla: Afrikanisches Viertel

Afrikanisches Viertel: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fridolin freudenfett (Peter Kuley), CC BY-SA 3.0. Cornelius Fredericks died on 16 February 1907 in the concentration camp on Shark Island, at the German colonial port of Lüderitz — a place named for the Bremen merchant Adolf Lüderitz. He had been captain of the ǃAman since 1893, had fought a guerrilla campaign alongside Hendrik Witbooi against the German colonial army in South West Africa, and had surrendered on 3 March 1906. He was shipped to the island that September with roughly 1,795 other Nama prisoners. Most of them died there of cold, hunger and neglect; the bodies were buried at low tide and taken by the sea. On 2 December 2022, in a district of Berlin called Wedding, a street called Lüderitzstraße became Cornelius-Fredericks-Straße. It had carried the other name for more than a century.

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Image: Fridolin freudenfett (Peter Kuley) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afrikanisches Viertel: The Zoo That Was Never Built

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Afrikanisches Viertel exists because of a plan that failed. Before the First World War the animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck — whose Hamburg Tierpark had made him famous — proposed a second park on the sandy ground north of Wedding, on what is now the Volkspark Rehberge. It was to...

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Image: OTFW, Berlin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afrikanisches Viertel: An Atlas of an Empire

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the street signs and you are reading a gazetteer of German colonial ambition. Kameruner Straße and Togostraße and Ghanastraße and Guineastraße and Senegalstraße and Kongostraße. Windhuker Straße and Swakopmunder Straße and Otawistraße, from German South West Africa. Sansibar...

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Image: Denis Barthel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Afrikanisches Viertel: The Sign That Did Not Change

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first attempt to deal with Carl Peters shows how these arguments go when nobody wants to have them properly. In 1986 the Petersallee was quietly re-dedicated — not to a different name, but to a different Peters. It would henceforth honour Hans Peters, a jurist who had resiste...

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Image: Denis Barthel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Afrikanisches Viertel: Four New Names

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0. A jury was formed in 2016. Six candidate names were selected in May 2017, and in April 2018 the district assembly of Mitte made its choices. The signs themselves did not come down until late 2022 for Lüderitzstraße and Nachtigalplatz. Nachtigalplatz became Manga-Bell-Platz, for R...

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Image: OTFW, Berlin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afrikanisches Viertel: Who Actually Lives Here

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith on geo.hlipp.de, CC BY-SA 2.0. For all its symbolism this is an ordinary Berlin quarter, mostly built up in the 1920s and 1930s, hemmed in by Müllerstraße, Seestraße, the Volkspark Rehberge, the Goethepark and the boundary with Reinickendorf. Four apartment blocks on Afrikanische Straße between Sambesistraße a...

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Image: Colin Smith on geo.hlipp.de | CC BY-SA 2.0