The names of Communist-era leaders should be erased from city streets, Evelyn Zupke said
Germany’s parliamentary commissioner has called for renaming streets bearing the names of Vladimir Lenin and Cold War–era socialist leaders.
Streets in multiple cities still carry the names of politicians from Soviet-aligned East Germany, which reunified with pro-US West Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Evelyn Zupke, the Bundestag’s commissioner representing former East German political prisoners, told the newspaper Bild that names associated with the socialist past should be removed from public spaces.
“Thirty-five years after reunification, no street should be named after Lenin, Otto Grotewohl, or Wilhelm Pieck. Naming a street is an expression of appreciation by our democratic society today. These individuals, however, symbolize the suffering of thousands of victims,” she said on Saturday. Zupke added that changing the names “would send the right signal on the 35th anniversary of German unity.”
According to Bild, more than a dozen cities in the former East Germany have streets named after Lenin, including Nauen in Brandenburg. A spokesperson for Nauen told the newspaper that street names are decided by the city council, and the matter was not on the agenda.
A spokesperson for the town of Weissenfels said that although Mayor Martin Papke “supports the remaining in the long term,” the final decision rests with the residents. The town in Saxony-Anhalt has streets named after Lenin and Pieck, East Germany’s leader from 1949 to 1960, as well as a street named in honor of German-Soviet friendship.
Many countries from the former Eastern Bloc removed pro-Communist names and statues following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine launched its own “decommunization” campaign after the US-backed coup in 2014, with the last remaining Lenin statue reportedly toppled in August. Moscow has condemned the campaign as a thinly veiled attempt to erase Ukraine’s historical ties with Russia.
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