Renaming the past in post-Nazi Germany: insights into the politics of street naming in Mannheim and Potsdam

Abstract

The critical turn in the study of toponymy has drawn attention to the politics of place-naming practices and to how place names are embedded into systems of meaning and partake in social and ideological discourses. A measure of historical revision, the commemorative renaming of streets in the context of regime change is a common strategy employed to signify the break with the past. This article juxtaposes patterns of renaming the past in two German cities from 1945 through 1950 as an aspect of the democratic reconstruction of post-Nazi Germany. The moderate pattern applied in Mannheim represented a restorative approach and signified continuity with the pre-1933 Weimar Republic. The radical pattern applied in communist-controlled Potsdam represented the future-oriented approach of socialist transformation. At one level, the investigation explores patterns of commemorative renaming of streets in two German provincial cities after the collapse of Nazi Germany. At another, the juxtaposition of two patterns of renaming the past in post-Nazi Germany offers insights into large-scale renaming of streets as a ritual of revolution that, involving different interests and priorities introduces major political shifts and the ideological reorientation of society they entail into urban namescapes.