The “Mohr” must disappear from Zurich’s cityscape

The topic was a hot topic in local politics last year: the city council decided to have all house names containing “Mohr” removed. He had reacted to a collective “Vo da”, which felt the designations as racist. A working group on racism in public space (Riör) set up by the city council supported the thesis and recommended that the city council eliminate the house names.

Inform instead of remove

However, there was resistance to the measure in Zurich’s parliament, the municipal council: Stefan Urech (SVP) and Shaibal Roy (GLP) submitted a postulate that asked the city council to refrain from removing the inscriptions. Instead, they should be placed in the historical context with the help of information boards or QR codes and corresponding background information.

On Wednesday evening, more than a year after it was submitted, the postulate was discussed in the municipal council. “Racism must not be tolerated,” said Stefan Urech at the beginning of the debate. All parties agree on that. The question, however, is whether the “Mohr” designations are racist. From a historical perspective, everything speaks against it. The name goes back to the Moors and Saint Mauritius. But the historical context is completely ignored.

It would be better not to cover the inscriptions, but to explain them to the people. “If we say that everything is racist, then soon nothing will be racist anymore,” said Urech. Yasmin Bourgeois (FDP) argued similarly: “By covering inscriptions we are not fighting racism.” The city council simply had no backbone and delegated everything to a group of experts.

Are the people stupid?

In addition, the term “Mohr” never had a negative connotation, otherwise the owners would certainly not have used it to describe their own house. The city council apparently thinks the population is stupid and doesn’t trust them to interpret the inscriptions against the original background.

Ursula Näf (SP) countered that it wasn’t enough just to see the inscriptions in a historical context. There are people for whom such designations are hurtful. There were clear signals from the population that the racist traces in the cityscape had to be removed. And the city council had rightly listened to these voices. However, removing the inscriptions does not mean that they should be forgotten.

Mayor Corine Mauch told the council that the topic was gaining in importance. The Riör report was only an interim result. An internal administrative “Coordination Committee for Remembrance Culture” has now been set up to show how the city should deal with the various issues in the future. It represents numerous service departments from the North American Native Museum (Nonam) to the Street Naming Commission.

Specifically, the city council has now decided that the inscriptions should not be removed, but only covered. The building permit for this was granted, but is not yet legally binding due to objections. The measures now planned should not only be able to be reversed, they should also be explained on site. Information boards draw attention to the connections.

The «M-Word»

Anna-Béatrice Schmaltz (Greens) finally found that the “M-word” was “a form of violence in public space”. Everyone should be able to walk through the streets of Zurich without being insulted. The fact that the word “Mohr” was not even spoken on the left hand side made Michael Schmid angry: If you talk about the “M-Word”, this is also a form of discrimination. After all, there are numerous people who are called Mohr or something similar.

Guy Krayenbühl (GLP) recalled that Shaibal Roy, who co-signed the postulate, was the only black person on the Zurich municipal council until recently – and yet spoke out against the removal of the inscriptions. The red-green side of the Council was no longer able to convince: Parliament refused to transfer the postulate by 60 to 50 votes with 0 abstentions. 15 members were absent from the vote, which took place just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening.