As the Green group in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district assembly (BVV), we work together with our partners in the SPD and FDP voting alliance for local politics that is socially just, sustainable and makes our neighbourhoods good places to live. Many of our motions come from concrete needs in the neighbourhood, and this one is no exception:

The district office is requested to rename Treitschkestraße in Steglitz.

The committee for education and culture should hold the debate with the public through suitable events and actively involve residents. Within one year of the decision, the committee should present a proposal for the new name. As part of the renaming, all of the residents’ personal documents are to be reissued quickly, free of charge and without red tape.

Rationale:

It is unworthy of a city like Berlin to still honour a historically heavily criticised figure like Heinrich von Treitschke with his own street in 2022. This special honour goes to a historian whom the later Nobel laureate Theodor Mommsen, during Treitschke’s own lifetime, rightly called the “father of modern antisemitism”. Steglitz-Zehlendorf is the last place in Germany that still has a street named after Treitschke. Treitschke is known, among other things, for the sentence “The Jews are our misfortune”, which the Nazi propaganda paper “Der Stürmer” used as a slogan. His antisemitic statements were heavily criticised in his own lifetime and sparked the Berlin antisemitism dispute.