Renaming the Past: Changes in "City Text" in Germany and Austria, 1945-1947

Author(s): Maoz Azaryahu

Source: History and Memory, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 32-53
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25618598 .
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Maoz Azaryahu

Renaming the Past: Changes in "City Text"

in Germany and Austria, 1945-1947

May 1945 marked the beginning of a process of change in

the official culture of Germany. The collapse of the Third
Reich and the emergence of the post-Nazi social and moral
order had an immediate impact on the official culture, here
defined as the reflections and representations of the ruling
social and moral order in the semiosphere. This article
intends to analyze aspects of these changes as manifested in
the of streets and in German and Austrian
renaming squares
cities in the years 1945-47. Renaming was part of the effort to
eradicate the Nazi version of the German national past from
the semiosphere and to replace it with a modified version,
to the emerging new social and moral order. The
adapted
pattern of change
was not uniform, varying from city to city in
accordance with local constraints and the prevailing balance of
power in the different municipalities. This article
political
considers the various patterns of change, while devoting
to the case of Berlin, the former Prussian
particular attention
and German capital city.

"City Texts" and Official Culture

The past is a basic component of the official culture.

National or collective "past" is a cultural construct of primary
importance, since the past is an effective strategy for
the social and moral order. The "past" is
legitimizing ruling
in the form of a chronological narrative,1 which is
designed
the conventional form found in textbooks. It is constructed of
sequential and causal chains that lead inevitably to the
status quo embodied
present, which is identified with the by
the ruling social order. This particular structure of the past is
structure of
closely related to its legitimizing effect, since the

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 Renaming the Past

the narrative of the past renders the present inevitable and

therefore natural.

The past is constructed by the present. Nominated agents of

the ruling order are entrusted with the task of selecting the
version of the past from a given reservoir of "historical facts"
(historical figures and events). These agents construct the
sequential and causal chains that define the particular version
of the past according to a prescribed set of ideological and
moral guidelines. They determine the heroes of the past 33
accordingly, those historical figures whose myths serve as a
moral example and as a model for social action. At the same
time, they condemn others to the role of anti-heroes, of
enemies who threaten the moral principles represented by the
heroes.
In order for a particular version of the past to be part of
the social realm, it must operate in the semiosphere, i.e., be
part of the mechanisms of generating and distributing
meanings that are constantly at work in the networks of social
communication. The role of the past as a legitimizing factor is
the reason why the official version of the past dominates the
authorized public networks of social communication.
Oppositional versions, which by definition challenge the
official version and the order it legitimizes, are removed from
those networks and function as versions of the
suppressed
and hence are not of the official culture.
past, part
Street names, which serve as a vehicle for
commemorating
heroes and events, are a conventional mechanism for
glorious
inserting the official version of the past into the semiosphere.
Any set of street names in a particular city, which I shall term
the "city text," is a representation of the past, but this
representation is confined to heroes and glorious events alone.
The "eternal life" guaranteed by street names is the reward
rendered to those heroes who sustained the - the
ruling order
same order that reciprocally declared them worthy of the
honor of immortalization. In this sense, the version of the
past
written on street signs is not identical with the version found
in textbooks, which mentions anti-heroes as well. Moreover,
because of their spatial structure, city texts give no indication
of progression in time: they lack a time-arrow, and all heroes

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 Maoz Azaryahu

and events (apart from the historical explanation attached to a

selected number of signs) exist simultaneously, with no
distinction between "before" and "after," and hence between
cause and effect.
It would seem, however, that street names have only minor
significance as a vehicle for introducing the official version of
the past to the community, especially when compared with the
intensity of messages transferred in the course of
34 commemorative events or
during
visits to historical museums.

Street names are part of everyday life, and the individual's

recurrent encounter with the past they represent is casual and
mostly unconscious. But this apparent disadvantage is also a
merit in its own right: this particular of the
representation
past operates in those dimensions of social life that appear to
be the most detached from political contexts. Through street
names (as in the case of banknotes and postage stamps) the
- but on such levels of human and
past becomes omnipresent
social activities where it is hardly noticed. The past is
interwoven with daily life and thus gains the appearance of
naturalness, a most desired effect in of the
light past's
function as a legitimizing factor for the ruling order.
City texts, therefore, as an important component of official
culture, are vulnerable to radical political reorientations of the
ruling order.2 This was seen during the French Revolution and
the ensuing renaming of streets and squares in Paris: in 1792,
for instance, Place Louis XV was renamed Place de la
Revolution (later Place de la Concorde). The renaming that
took place in Germany after 1945 was anchored in the
particular context of the time, but the basic matrix is
universal: any change in the ruling social and moral order is
followed by a redefinition of the official culture in general
and the official version of the past in particular. The
of streets is only one manifestation of the general
renaming
process. An additional factor is the proclamatory value that
serves as a political declaration in its own
renaming has: it
right, displaying and asserting the fact that political changes
have occurred and that the "ownership" of the official culture
and the media for its presentation has changed hands.

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 Renaming thePast

This study examines four patterns of the rewriting of the

city text in Germany and Austria during the years 1945-47,
i.e., in the period following the collapse of the Third Reich
and preceding the establishment of the new bi-state order in
Germany in 1949. These patterns represent different options
for the post-Nazi national order, each associated with and
a distinct version of the "national past," as
supported by
in the modified city texts. The German case is
represented
in that the defeated version of the national past was 35
peculiar
not replaced by a coherent, all-national version, but by
different versions, each characterizing a certain locality as well
as an for a coherent national version.
representing option
However, no
single version emerged as dominant. These
options were later made official by a distinct
competing
- a state: the different versions
political entity analyzed here
were later to be identified with the different successor states
that replaced Greater Germany and its one Nazified version of
the national past.
A text, as
city the term implies, is owned by the
municipality. Its content reflects the power relations in city
hall. It often mirrors the city's distinctive political structure
(unless the state intervenes directly in the process). Therefore,
it is not surprising that local variations are at times substantial.
The focus of analysis here is Berlin, whose role as the former
Prussian and German capital city lends special significance to
the editing of this most important city text. The Berlin pattern
of renaming the past was not representative of the whole of
Germany. This is true in principle of every city text, yet the
distinctiveness of the Berlin case lies in its special political
constellation (which was also found in Vienna): the former
capital of the Reich was divided into four sectors, each
governed by one of the victorious powers. This arrangement
made Berlin a test case for the intentions of the Big Powers
toward the emerging new political order in Germany. In 1948
Berlin became a pivot of the Cold War. The growing tensions
led to the division of the city in November 1948 and the
establishment of two municipal entities: East Berlin,
comprising the eight districts of the Soviet sector, and West
Berlin, comprising the remaining twelve districts of the

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 Maoz Azaryahu

American, and
British, French sectors. This pattern of
administrative-political division repeated itself a year later on
the national level with the foundation of the two German
states.

In order to provide a broader perspective for the analysis,

three other editing patterns - in Vienna, Hamburg, and
- will also be discussed. These three which until
Leipzig cities,
1945 were major cities of the "Grossdeutsches Reich," were
36 later, with the establishment of the new political order in
conquered Germany, to be included within three different
states: Hamburg in West Germany, Leipzig in East Germany,
and Vienna, since 1955, the capital city of sovereign Austria.
The analysis of these three patterns is schematic only, without
reference to the
decision-making processes.

Common Denominator: Denazification of City Texts

The collapse of the Third Reich had an immediate effect on

German city texts. Prominent Nazi symbols were deleted from
the texts soon after the military occupation and the
establishment of a new, denazified civil administration were
completed. The Nazis had edited the texts according to their
own interpretation of the national past, and their monopoly of
the official communications networks had extended beyond
the radio, press and films. After the passing of the
Ermdchtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) on 20 March 1933, there
had begun a rapid Gleichschaltung of German city texts, which
had been rewritten and adapted to the new ruling Nazi
cosmology. Undesired elements
had been eradicated from the
texts and thus banned the public realm. The process
from
had been swift, indicating the regime's awareness of the
propagandist^ value of these texts. As Willy Brandt wrote later
in his memoirs: "In Lubeck on 20 March a large number of
persons were taken into so-called protective custody. Soon
after there began the renaming of streets (Horst Wessel
instead of August Bebel!)."3 The Nazis had renamed 121 of
Berlin's streets. In December 1938 alone, 97 of Vienna's
streets had been renamed, an act which had led to the
Gleichschaltung of the city text.4

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 Renaming thePast

The Allies themselves were quick to eradicate the symbols of

the defeated Reich from the public realm. Swastikas made of
bronze and stone were removed from public buildings, and
the Nazi flag and anthem were declared illegal.5 However,
purging the city texts was the task of the newly nominated
local councils. The impact of such a step was well understood.
On 24 May 1945, the first meeting of Berlin's new civil
administration was held, at which vital topics, such as food
the most
and urgent housing problems, were 37
supplies
discussed: the physical existence of the city was at stake.
Nonetheless, it is significant that during this first meeting the
-
of street names was also raised an
question outstanding
illustration of the importance that the new fathers of the city
assigned to the symbolic realm. Many streets no longer existed
as urban but the of street names was
thoroughfares, question
still of great substance. The purge was swift. According to a
report of 22 June of the special department in charge of the
operation, the removal of the undesired names had been
completed and the old signs had been replaced by temporary
made of wood and carton.6
signs

The Austrian Option

Nazi segments of city text were deleted in all towns and

cities of the former Reich, including Austria, which like
Germany had been divided into four Zones of Occupation.
However, in Austria, unlike in a central
Germany, government
was constituted, a fact that secured Austria's political unity.
The Viennese text had already been purged of its Nazi
elements by 27 April 1945, only one week after the city had
been conquered by the Red Army.7 In Vienna, this action had
a distinct significance: the of the text
rewriting signaled not
only the end of the "brown era," but also the restoration of
Austria as an entity independent from Germany. The new
version of the past was a clear manifestation of the Austrian
national orientation, which became dominant and replaced
the Pan-German orientation that had been represented by the
Nazis and accepted enthusiastically by large segments of
Austrian The Pan-German had become relevant
society. option

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 Maoz Azaryahu

after the 1918 collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy; on 12

November 1918 the Austrian Provisional Assembly had
unanimously voted a law, according to which "German
Austria" was part of the German Reich.8 The Austrian
socialists, for instance, had envisioned a unified and
democratic Greater Germany, of which German Austria would
be an integral part. Yet in the peace treaty of Saint-Germain,
the Allies had explicitly vetoed the scheme, and the "state
38 that no one wanted," as Austria was often referred to, was

born. It was the Nazis who had realized the old dream in
1937. Austria had become a province of a German Reich
whose capital was Berlin, the historical rival of the Danube
metropolis.
In 1945, the separation from the Reich was supported by a
strange coalition comprising conservatives, socialists and
communists: on 27 April 1945, representatives of the Austrian
Communist Party (KPO), Austrian Socialist Party (SPO), and
the conservative People's Party (OVP) a declaration of
signed
Austrian Some of the ultra-conservatives
independence.9
dreamt of restoring the monarchy. Felix Hurdes, the
conservative minister of education, enthusiastically supported
the idea of a Austrian nation. The communists, who
separate
a significant role in Austrian political life in the first
played
few months after the liberation, coordinated their line with
Moscow, which favored an independent Austria in Central
Europe. The communist leaders advocated Austrian patriotism:
on 27 April Ernst Fischer, the party leader flown to Vienna
from Moscow, an article in the communist
published
newspaper in which he cited the Austrian national heroes who
should represent Austria as a "Kulturnation" in its own
On that very day the city text was rewritten: the
right.10
from Germany was underlined by removing the
separation
names of not only Nazi but also Prussian heroes. However,
Prussia had never been popular in the capital of the Habsburg
monarchy since the historical rivalry between the two powers
in the 18th and 19th centuries, which had culminated in the
Prussian military triumph of 1866 and the consequent
exclusion of Austria from the German Bund.

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 Renaming thePast

The new version of the past presented by the city text was
Austrian. The new street names commemorated
profoundly

politicians, writers, benefactors, artists, and social reformers, all

"local heroes" hardly known beyond the Austrian borders, yet
- and that was the crucial - all
point unmistakably Austrian.
The capital of the Ostmark became an Austrian capital city
once again, at least according to the city text, which after its
editing presented a distinctively Austrian national version of
the past. 39

Germany

Unlike Austria, Germany, west of the Oder-Neisse line, did

not have an alternative national option. After 1949 the
May
process of redefining German identity within the older
framework of the German nation was the
began. "Democracy"
key word in the political cooperation among the reemergent
political forces after the collapse of the Third Reich. All the
parties, including the communists, were firmly committed to
the new, democratic Germany. They all understood a
"democratic" order to mean the negation of the Nazi model,
but they had different notions regarding the positive content
of the term. In particular, developments in the communist
doctrine severely affected the initial cooperation between the
two large workers' parties. In 1945 the German Communist
Party (KPD) preached the "German road to socialism," which
meant a rejection of the Soviet model of communization.
Later, the forced unification of the Social Democratic Party
(SPD) and the KPD in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the
foundation of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was
part of a new aimed at communist
policy securing political
hegemony in Germany in general and in the Soviet Zone of
in particular. After April 1946, the
Occupation dividing line in
the Berlin City Hall was between the communists, supported
by the Soviets, and the non-communist parties.
The distinctive political characteristics of each city, which
were often related to the policies of the
closely Occupation
Authorities, played a crucial role in the manner in which the
various city texts were modified. The different
political views

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 Maoz Azaryahu

and power relationships were manifested in the degree of

radicality in purging the text of its ''undemocratic'' elements.
All the parties agreed that Nazi elements should be erased
from the However, there was no
cityscape. unanimity
regarding other
segments the German of national past,
especially those related to Prussia and the Empire. In the
1920s the Berlin City Assembly had deliberated time and again
the question of deleting these aspects of the national past
40 from the city text. The question was in 1945, but
reopened
now there was also a real
possibility of canonizing the heroes
of the revolutionary political myth, which had been
inconceivable before 1932, and even more so after the Nazi
seizure of power.

1. Berlin

The Soviets were conscious of the supreme importance of

the city administration for future political developments.
Knowing that in a short time they would have to withdraw
their troops from West Berlin, they made an effort to mold
the city's administration in such a way as to enable the
communists to influence political developments in the future.
At the beginning of May 1945, a pioneer group of communists
headed by Walter Ulbricht (known as the "Ulbricht group")
was flown from Moscow to Berlin. Their task was to
design a
"democratic" city administration with modest yet influential
communist participation.11 Among the sensitive posts occupied
by communists were the chief of police and the head of the
municipal personnel department. The administration thus
formed in May 1945 lasted until the October 1946 elections,
and its functioning was relatively harmonious. In these
elections the communists suffered a humiliating defeat, and
this marked the beginning of the process that culminated two
years later in the political division of the city into a
communist-ruled and a Western
part part.
Contrary to other cities, where the city's "ownership" of city
signs was self-evident, the new Berlin administration had to
make a rule concerning this basic question. The source of the
problem was a royal Prussian decree from December 1813,

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 Renaming thePast

according to which the Prussian State was the sole owner of

the city texts of the three royal towns, Berlin, Potsdam, and
Charlottenburg (which had been included in Greater Berlin
since 1920). The objective of this decree was clear: it gave the
Prussian State total control over the content of the respective
city texts. After the Republic was proclaimed in 1918, the
Prussian State was represented de jure by the Ministry of the
Interior, and de facto by the Police Headquarters, which was a
state, rather than a city, authority. This situation was 41
unique
the reason why, in the 1920s, despite the City Assembly's clear
decisions to eradicate "reactionary" elements from the city
no were
text, practical steps taken to implement such a purge:
the State of Prussia, led by the SPD, used the legal situation
to block such modifications of the text.
With the surrender of the Reich and the factual liquidation
of Prussia (announced officially by the Allies in February
1947), the legal status of the street signs had to be clarified.12
This question was discussed at the very first meeting of the
newly appointed city magistrate. Dr. Werner, the appointed
mayor, who according to the criteria established by Ulbricht
was a of the middle class,"
representative "progressive
suggested that since the police had been hitherto responsible
- -
for street names, the now a
police municipal authority
should continue to be in charge of them.13 On 18 June 1945
this proposal was formally confirmed, and the Communist
Chief of Police Karl Maron, who was among the central
nominations of the "Ulbricht group," was officially appointed.
Berlin favored decentralization: it was decided that each
district would be responsible for its own text, while the role of
City Hall was mainly to supervise and coordinate the decisions
of the districts.14 On 20 June, at a meeting of the district
mayors, Maron emphasized that the question of renaming
streets should be coordinated by the central authority,
meaning himself. He urged the districts to promptly deliver
lists of those streets that had already been renamed, and also
lists of streets that had yet to be renamed. Maron stressed that
the districts were sovereign with respect to
renaming, except
for "the names of special main streets and squares, where
City

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 Maoz Azaryahu

Hall has the right to name them after significant figures of

the
present...."15
There were
two fundamentally approaches
opposing
regarding the objective of rewriting the city text. The first,
which might be referred to as the "minimal approach," was
advocated by the representatives of conservative and moderate
liberal circles, organized in the Christian-Democratic Union
(CDU) and the Liberal Party. They wanted the purge of the
42 text to be limited to Nazi names with the aim of restoring the
previous, pre-Nazi names. This approach was clearly presented
at the firstmeeting of the Berlin City Hall, held on 23 May,
by Dr. Werner, the mayor of Greater Berlin: "We should
submit proposals concerning the restoration of old names
deleted by the Nazis." The general idea was to restore the
text to its form. In a sense, this was a
pre-Nazi reactionary

concept, it meant
because a total disregard for the radically
changed political conditions and the emergent power
relations, assuming an illusion of continuity with 1932. On the
other hand, restoring the old names had a clear symbolic
message, being a declaration that the changes carried out on
Nazi orders were null and void. In fact, this proposal was only
a compromise, since the real objective of the conservatives was
the total depoliticization of the city text. Thus, at a meeting of
the district mayors held on 20 June, the mayor of Zehlendorf,
a rich upper-middle-class district in south-west Berlin, proudly
that all the new names in his district were apolitical,
reported
having been taken from the fields of mineralogy, geography,
and
botany.16
The "radical approach," which had first appeared in 1920,
aimed at a thorough "democratization" of the city text, i.e., a
total purge of "reactionary" elements and the incorporation
of the revolutionary myth. This radical attitude found
in an article in the Berliner Zeitung on 27
expression
"Berlins Strassen - neu whose
September 1945, benannt,"
anonymous author claimed that one tenth of Berlin street
names did not represent the democratic, anti-fascist ideals of
the new Germany. Among such names were those representing
and German - names of
Prussian militarism imperialism
Prussian and fieldmarshals, such as Moltke and
generals

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 Renaming thePast

Hindenburg, or those of German emperors, such as Wilhelm

I. In accordance with this view, just a few days before the first
elections to the municipal assembly, Karl Maron formulated
the criteria that should direct the purge of the text: "the
principle is: first, the fascist names should disappear, second,
militaristic and imperialistic names, and third, one should get
rid of names that several times."17
appear
This radical proposal was issued probably in the heat of the
election campaign and was intended to delineate and clarify 43
ideological and political fronts in the city. However, this
formulation was most because it was a
particular interesting

repetition of a well-known formula that had been expressed in

1927 in the form of a resolution passed by the Berlin
a
Municipal Assembly.18 There was, nonetheless, significant
difference between the 1927 resolution and its 1946 successor:
the first paragraph of the latter dealt with fascist names, which
had naturally not been mentioned in the former resolution.
The administrative paragraph, third in Maron's formula, had
been the first in the 1927 resolution, followed immediately by
the "political" paragraph (at that time the main issue). The
revival of this formula indicates that the memory of those
earlier heated deliberations (which had not had any actual
effect on the text) had not been forgotten almost 20 years
later, and that to some extent, especially for the communists,
the new political situation in Germany presented an
appropriate opportunity to accomplish what they had been
unable to achieve at the time of the Weimar
Republic,
because of the negative attitude of the ruling SPD at that time
towards a radical rewriting of the city text.19 At the same
meeting itwas reported that 1,795 out of Berlin's 9,000 streets
should be renamed, in addition to 89 squares, 9 parks, 17
bridges, and one neighborhood. According to this, almost one
fifth of the city text should be modified (the above-mentioned
article in the Berliner Zeitung had claimed that "only" one
tenth of the text should be renamed).
Maron did not specify in his speech what new names should
replace those that were to be deleted. The question of
commemoration was as important as that of "de
commemoration" because the new names and the version of

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 Maoz Azaryahu

the national past they represented were a part and parcel of

the new democratic order in Germany. It was clear that the
new street names should represent the "progressive" legacy of
the German nation, but the crucial question was whether, and
to what extent, representatives of the revolutionary tradition
should be included in the text. In 1921 a delegate of the
Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) had demanded
that a square be named after Trotsky. Later, Karl Liebknecht
44 became the representative hero of the left-wing revolutionary
myth.20 The article in the Berliner Zeitung defined three
of "heroes" whose commemoration was essential:
categories
(1) anti-Nazis, heroes of the resistance; (2) representatives of
the progressive national heritage, those who had preached an
advanced and just social and political order, such as Marx,
Gustav Stresemann, and Walter Rathenau (a very interesting
juxtaposition of names that displayed just how much the years
of Nazi dictatorship had distorted historical perspective: only
the Nazi prism could present Marx and the two leading
statesmen of the Weimar Republic as equal representatives of
a social and moral order alternative to the Nazi one); and (3)
the "humanists," the heroes of German culture,
progressive
such as Heinrich Heine and Max Liebermann, in addition to
the already canonized Goethe, Leibnitz, Bach and Kant.
Neither the author of this article nor Karl Maron mentioned
at this stage the heroes of the communist revolutionary
tradition: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Ernst
Thalmann, the martyrs of German communism.
outstanding

City Hall interfered only minimally in the rewriting of the

text. A rare exception was Maron's proposal on 16 February
1946 to commemorate August Bebel and Franz Mehring, in
honor of their birthdays: the Belle-Alliance-Platz in Kreuzberg
(the American sector) was renamed after Mehring, and the
in the city center, after Bebel. This was a
Franz-Joseph-Platz,
well-calculated choice: Bebel had been the admired leader of
the pre-First World War SPD, while Mehring, the historian of
the workers' movement, had been among the founding fathers
of German communism. After the death in an accident of
General Bersarin, the Soviet military commander of Berlin,
Maron naming a square in Friedrichshain (the
proposed

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 Renaming thePast

Soviet sector) after him. Until the October 1946 elections,

these were the only names ordinated from City Hall. The
Communist Maron was very cautious indeed in utilizing the
power invested in him.
The main activity was carried out by the various districts. In
September 1945, for instance, the department in charge of
Tiergarten (the British sector) issued a list of (a) streets
renamed by the Nazis; (b) streets renamed after May 1945;
and (c) proposals concerning planned renamings. In the 45
course of these activities the names of Friedrich Ebert (the
first president of the Weimar Republic), Stresemann,
Rathenau, and Paul Singer (the legendary leader of the SPD
faction in the Berlin City Parliament in the times of the
Empire) were restored to the text. By 1945 a few names of
lesser-known anti-Nazi martyrs had already been
commemorated in Tegel (north Berlin). Since the direct
interference of City Hall was minimal, the question whether
communist heroes would be commemorated or not was left to
the different districts. As expected, on this subject there were
radical variations among the districts.
In 1945 Max Reichpietsch, a revolutionary socialist and a
sailor in the Imperial Navy, who had been executed in 1917,
was commemorated. Reichpietsch replaced Admiral Tirpitz, the
commander-in-chief of the Imperial Navy, who had been
inserted into the text by the Nazis. This exchange expressed a
symbolic inversion, which in turn clearly signaled the direction
of the political change. In August 1945 the
Hohenzollernplatz
in the working-class district of Neukoln (the American sector)
was renamed Karl-Marx-Platz; in April 1946 the main
thoroughfare of the same district was also named after Karl
Marx. The Horst-Wessel-Platz in Friedrichshain, renamed
by
the Nazis in 1933, was renamed Luxemburgplatz. However, for
a time the new name of the square was not clear. A
city plan
from 1946 gave its name as
Liebknechtplatz,21 while according
to a map of 1947 itwas still named after Horst Wessel.22 When
the new names were announced
officially in 1947 it was
presented as This choice was not accidental.
Luxemburgplatz.
Before the final Stalinization of political life in the Soviet
Zone of Occupation in Germany in 1948, Rosa
Luxemburg,

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 Maoz Azaryahu

the Marxist theoretician, was the symbol of the "German road

to socialism" and served as a worthy German alternative to
Lenin and his revolutionary doctrines.
A list prepared for internal use by the department in charge
of renaming streets in Tiergarten in September 1945 indicated
that a street in Moabit, a profoundly
proletarian neighbor
hood, had been named after Ernst Thalmann. Moreover, a city
plan of 1946 showed that the Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee had been
46 renamed Thalmannallee. Thalmann was a Janus-like
political
hero: on the one hand, he was the communist leader who
had conducted the Stalinization of the party in the late 1920s
and early 1930s and had been a bitter enemy of social
democracy; on the other hand, his arrest and death in
Buchenwald had made him a prominent anti-Nazi martyr.23
However, there is contradictory information concerning his
commemoration in Tiergarten: evidently the intention to insert
his name into the text was not implemented in this district,
nor in any other. Indeed, an internal letter from the District
Council in the neighboring district of Charlottenburg indicates
that the opposition of middle- and low-rank officials to the
canonization of Thalmann played a role in postponing the
commemoration.24 With the growing political tensions in
Berlin, the subject was taken off the agenda of West Berlin,
and he was never commemorated in that part of the city. In
East Berlin, however, he was a duly proclaimed hero. A square
was named after him in the city center in August 1949, the
fifth anniversary of his death.25

2. Leipzig

The Saxon metropolis was captured by the advancing

American army in April 1945. According to the agreements
between the Allies, Saxony was part of the Soviet Occupation
Zone. Hence, the American occupation was only temporary,
and in the beginning of July West Saxony and Leipzig were
incorporated into the Soviet Zone (at the same time the
Soviets left West Berlin). Leipzig's city text was edited
according to the "radical approach" advocated by Karl Maron
in Berlin. During the second half of 1945, 93 streets and

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 Renaming thePast

squares in Leipzig were renamed, dramatically changing the

version of the past they presented.26 The new version not
only
differed substantially from the version of May 1945, but also
from that of January 1933. Prussian and German militarism
and imperialism were almost totally erased from the text.
Among the de-commemorated historic heroes were Manteufel,
Roon, Moltke, Clausewitz, Mackensen, and Hindenburg. The
names of some heroes of the Wars of Liberation, such as
Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, were not erased, while those of 47
others, such as Yorck and Blucher, were. Bismarck, the
founding father of the Reich, was also de-commemorated. At
the same time, the memory of the German
ruling dynasties
was eradicated from the text with the renaming of the
Konigsplatz, Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse, Kaiserin-Augusta-Strasse,
Kaiser-Maximilian-Strasse, and Kaiser-Wilhem-Strasse, to men
tion only some of the most significant
examples.
The democratization of the text meant
restoring the names
of Rathenau and Ebert. Beyond that, the names of Marx,
Engels, Lassalle, Bebel, and Wilhelm Liebknecht (Karl's father)
made a rapid appearance on the street
signs of Leipzig. Those
in charge of the text demonstrated their historical awareness
with a carefully selected set of that were of
exchanges
symbolic value: for example, Lassalle replaced Bismarck, and
Bebel replaced Kaiser Wilhelm. The heroes of German
communism - Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Mehring -
were commemorated,
along with heroes of the anti-Nazi
resistance. Thalmann became part of Leipzig's text in 1945, as
did Rudolf Breitscheid, the most prominent martyr of the
SPD. Among other martyrs commemorated were the brother
and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, heroes of the Munich
circle "The White Rose," who belonged to an all-German
of anti-Nazi
myth martyrdom.
The modified Leipzig text displayed a leftist-radical version
of the national past. The
editing, however, was not concluded
in 1945: in a second wave that followed in the
years 1946-47,
twenty other names representing the militaristic and dynastic
tradition were deleted from the text.27 These included names
of admirals of the
Imperial Navy during the First World War,
such as Tirpitz, von Scheer, and von Schroeder, who
Hipper,

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 Maoz Azaryahu

had been inserted into the city text by the Nazis. This second
wave removed the memory of the Saxon Elector Johann
Georg, of Prussian kings and German emperors, such as
Friedrich Wilhelm and Wilhelm, and also of the Battle of
Sedan, denoting the victory over France in 1870, which had
been a popular of the nationalist
symbol right in the time of
the Second Empire. Among the most interesting names that
appeared was that of Count von the hero of the
Stauffenberg,
48 attempt on Hitler's life known as the Plot." was
''July Leipzig
the only city in the Soviet Zone of Occupation (later East
Germany) that included Stauffenberg in its version of the
national
past.

3. Hamburg

the in north-west was

Hamburg, important seaport Germany,
included in the British Zone of Occupation. Greater Hamburg
(Altona had been incorporated into Hamburg in 1937) had a
place of honor in the revolutionary legacy of German
communism, as the center of the 1923 revolution and as the
home city of Thalmann, and was noted for the vigorous anti
Nazi struggle in the city in the last years of the First Republic.
The SPD was the hegemonial political power in Hamburg
after the liberation (and for many years after) and enjoyed the
sympathy and support of the British Occupational
Administration. The editing pattern of the city text can be
described as "social democratic": considered
carefully
modifications with clear limits. De-commemoration was not

restricted to Nazi heroes alone, and commemoration was not

extended to
the major heroes of the communist myth of
proletarian revolution. In this case the tempo, contrary to that
in Leipzig, was moderate, even cautious. The purge began in
October 1945 with the removal of the names of key figures of
the Nazi pantheon, among them Hitler (who appeared in five
districts) and Horst Wessel (in six districts).28 Leo Schlagetter,
who had been executed by the French Occupational
Administration in the Ruhr in 1923 and had been hailed by
nationalist and Nazi circles as a hero of national resistance
(the communist attitude in the 1920s had been ambivalent),

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 Renaming the Past

was de-commemorated in a week later.29 In

Hamburg January
1946 the Francoallee was also renamed.30
After a pause of one and a half years, the editing was
resumed. The second stage of the purge began in September
1947. Its principal objective was to erase the militaristic
tradition from the text.31 During this stage the following
representatives of Prussian-German militarism were deleted: (1)
the admirals of the Imperial Navy; (2) Hindenburg and
Ludendorf, the outstanding representatives of reactionarism 49
and militarism; and (3) 19th-century Prussian and German
as Lutzow, Blucher, Roon, and Wrangel.
generals such
The difference between the patterns in Hamburg and
Leipzig reflects the different views of those in charge of the
text in the respective cities regarding the desired version of
the German national past. The similarities are evident: both
versions were purged of reactionary elements, although the
social democratic interpretation of "reactionary" was limited
as compared with the radical interpretation. It is
interesting to
note that neither version considered Gneisenau and
Scharnhorst as representatives of the reactionary tradition. On
the other hand, the Hamburg version acknowledged Bismarck
and the and as national heroes.
kings emperors
The restoration of heroes whose names had been deleted by
the Nazis was a natural option that was realized during the
denazification of the text. The names of the leaders of the
First Republic were reinstated, as were most of the
Jewish
names, such as Heine and Heinrich Hertz, though not
necessarily to their previous places in the cityscape.32 A clear
dividing line between the social democratic and the radical,
revolutionary version of the past was the attitude to the heroes
of the workers' movement. The social democratic text
included the names of Bebel and Lassalle and omitted those
of Marx and Engels, and, of course, Liebknecht and
Luxemburg. The only exception was Thalmann's
commemoration in Hamburg; but Thalmann was a "local
hero" in his native city, and his incorporation into the city
text signified the city's tribute to its famous son who had been
murdered in Buchenwald.33 Hans and Sophie Scholl were
honored by a street name in 1947. These heroes
February

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 Maoz Azaryahu

were common to both East and West German myths of anti

Nazi and functioned as unifying elements of the two
resistance
versions of the national past in East and West Germany.

Conclusion

The Austrian pattern of editing in Vienna, the social

democratic pattern in Hamburg, and the radical pattern in
50 Leipzig represent three possible versions of the national past
that were actually realized after 1945. The Viennese pattern
signaled Austria's separation from Greater Germany. The
Leipzig pattern foreshadowed the future East German version
of the German national past. The Hamburg pattern, however,
was not necessarily representative of the future Federal
Republic because of its relative radicalism regarding
representatives of the social democratic tradition; other cities
should be analyzed separately in order to study other patterns
of editing that were implemented in Western Germany after
1945. Yet the Hamburg pattern signified an option whose
realization was possible in the relatively pluralistic framework
of the Federal Republic, alongside more conservative
and of the common national
interpretations representations
past. As for Berlin, despite the intense activity concerning the
editing of the city text in the firstmonths after the war, only
40 streets and squares had in fact been renamed by August
1947. In Leipzig, whose population was only a fifth of Berlin's,
113 streets were renamed in that same period. In Vienna, 37
streets had been renamed as early as April 1945. The unique
political situation in Berlin was the reason for the relatively
static state of the text and for the inconsistencies that make it
to define a specific "Berlin pattern." The Berlin
impossible
a radical
city text displayed interesting contradictions:
revolutionary version coexisted with the traditional Prussian
German version of the national past. With the division of the
city in November 1948, the city text was also divided into two
separate texts, each a different version of the
representing
German national past. Only then could the communists, who
controlled the eastern part of the city, begin freely to remold
the text according to their particular view of the past.

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 Renaming thePast

Notes

1 Cf. R. Hodge and G. Kress, Social Semiotics (Oxford, 1988), 51

229-30.
2 On the dynamics of such processes, see my article, "The
Purge of Bismarck and Saladin: The Renaming of Streets in
East Berlin and Haifa. A Comparative Study in Culture
Poetics .
Planning," Today (forthcoming)
3 Willy Brandt, Links und Frei (Hamburg, 1982), 80. August
Bebel was the legendary leader of the pre-World War I SPD
(Social Democratic Party); Horst Wessel was the supreme
Nazi martyr.
4 Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien 44, no. 7 (1939).
5 In October 1945 the Allied Command in Germany issued
the official order concerning the abolition of Nazi laws,
among them the "Law Protecting the National Symbols" of
19 May 1933 and the "Law of the Flag" of 15 September
1935.
6 Bericht iiber die Tdtigkeit des Tiefbauamtes in der Dezernenten
besprechung am 22.6.1945 Berlin, Landesarchiv (West) Berlin.
7 Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien 51, no. 28 (1946).
8 W. T. Bluhm, Building the Austrian Nation. The Political
Integration of a Western State (New Haven and London, 1973),
25.
9 Ibid., 51.
10 Neues Osterreich, 27 April 1945; cf. Bluhm, Building the
Austrian Nation, 130ff.
11 This account is based on the description of a member of
the group, Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of theRevolution (1957;
London, 1975).
12 The legal question was solved only after the State of Prussia
was dissolved in February 1947 by the Allies. This step
paved the way for an official listing of all renamings that

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 Maoz Azaryahu

had occurred
since May 1945. This list was published in
August 1947.
13 Protokoll der Magistratssitzung vom 24.5.1945, Landesarchiv
(West) Berlin.
14 Protokoll der Magistratssitzung vom 18.6.1945, Landesarchiv
(West) Berlin.
15 Protokoll der Konferenz der Bezirksburgermeister vom 20.6.1945,
Landesarchiv (West) Berlin.
52 16 Protocol of meeting of District Mayors, 20 June 1945,
Landesarchiv (West) Berlin.
17 Protokoll der Magistratssitzung vom 28.9.1946, Landesarchiv
(West) Berlin.
18 Protokolle der Verhandlungen der Stadtverordnetenversammlung der
Stadt Berlin, session on 27 April 1927.
19 Cf. my article, "What Is to Be Remembered: The Struggle
over Street Names, Berlin 1921-1930," Tel Aviver Jahrbuch
fur deutsche Geschichte 17 (1988): 241-58.
20 Protokolle der Verhandlungen der Stadtverordnetenversammlung der
Stadt Berlin, session on 6 February 1930.
21 BAB Fiihrer (Berlin, 1946).
22 Silva-Stadtplan Berlin (Berlin, 1947).
23 In this capacity he was commemorated on one of a series
of three postage stamps dedicated to "anti-fascists" that was
issued in Mecklenburg in October 1945. Thalmann
represented the supreme communist martyr; Rudolf
Breitscheid represented the supreme martyr of the SPD;
and Erich Klausener represented the legacy of middle-class
political anti-Nazism.
24 Letter from Charlottenburg District Council to Berlin City
Hall and Tiergarten District Council, 17 October 1945,
District Archive of Charlottenburg (signature unclear).
25 West Berlin did not commemorate Thalmann, Luxemburg
or Liebknecht, who were commemorated in East Berlin, on
the basis of the legal-formal claim that since Berlin was
considered to be one, undivided city, double commem
oration was
unnecessary.
26 Verzeichnis der in der Stadt Leipzig seit dem 19.5.1945
umbenannten Strassen, Pldtze, Brucken und Wehre (Leipzig,
1945).

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 Renaming thePast

27 Amtliches Strassenverzeichnis Leipzig (Leipzig, 1947).

28 Amtlicher Anzeiger Hamburg, 25 October 1945.
29 Ibid., 1 November 1945.
30 Ibid., 24 January 1946.
31 Ibid., 25 September 1947.
32 In Hamburg "Jewish" names were reinstated in their
eight
pre-Nazi places during 1945. In April 1946 a Senate
Committee decided that the others would not necessarily
regain their old places, although their names would be 53
considered for other thoroughfares. This decision was

implemented later. See Antwort des Senats auf die schriftliche

Kleine Anfrage des Abgeordneten Eduard Prosch,
Burgerschaftsdrucksache 11/2389, Landesarchiv Hamburg.
33 The question of Thalmann's commemoration arose again in
Hamburg in spring 1985. The incentive came from the
ruling social democratic faction and was accepted, despite
the strong opposition of the conservatives, who maintained
that Thalmann had been a profound opponent of the
democratic ideal.

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