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Last August, Petersallee In Berlin’s “African Quarter” was renamed to disassociate it from Carl Peters, a tyrant who led the establishment of the colony of German East Africa. Peters was murderous racist, a hero for the Nazis. The campaign to rename Petersallee started in 1984. It took that long.

Mnyaka Sururu Mboro was among those pushing to have the name changed. He heard stories about Peters from his grandmother in Tanzania. “He liked to hang people, just only, most of the time, for his joy. Seeing, looking at them hanging there and he’s sipping his beer and smoking his pipe.”

Mboro moved to Germany in 1978. His grandmother made him promise her that he’d recover the head of Mangi Meli, a local chieftain murdered by the Germans in 1900, and that he would bring it back to Tanzania for a proper burial. “Up to today, still, I am searching for it,” Mboro says.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s museums, is responsible for all the colonial loot, including Benin Bronzes, and a huge collection of human remains. Its president, Hermann Parzinger, says everything has to go back. But it’s not so easy.

Justice Mvemba, the founder of Decolonial Tours, says Germany’s colonial past is often romanticized.
Her tours – highly recommended! – strive for "a more critical lens on the colonial era and to also break those glorified narratives.”

“Our society’s structures are based on colonial beliefs. So, in order for us to fight the climate crisis or provide equity for all, we have to question those structures that were set up with racist ideologies or racist beliefs” – Justice Mvemba, founder of Decolonial Tours.

It was impossible to fit everything into the story – there's so much more – but here's the link again: https://apnews.com/article/germany-colonialism-human-remains-tanzania-dcfa6fd319520d346c59b84ae6311874

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed, and to you for reading if you made it this far.