The musician Rio Reiser (“King of Germany”, “Everything Lies”) now has a place in Berlin named after him. The small Heinrichplatz in the district of Kreuzberg was officially renamed on Sunday. Reiser (1950-1996) was born as Ralph Christian Möbius in Berlin. His life and career were closely linked to the city and the trendy neighborhood for many years.
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) also came to the celebration with several thousand people and concerts. In the 1980s she was the manager of the political rock band Ton Steine Scherben (“Break what breaks you”, “No power for nobody”) for a few years, and Reiser was the singer before his solo career. For a while, Roth and Reiser lived with other musicians in a flat-sharing farmhouse in Fresenhagen, North Friesland.
For Roth, the renaming is a symbolic return of Rio Reiser to a district that was his home for years. She also recalled the singer’s commitment. “Rio was one of the first courageous artists to address the issue of being gay in a discriminatory and homophobic society,” she says. “For Rio, the private was always political.”
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The remaining members of Ton Scheine Scherben can also be seen on Sunday. They play in honor of their deceased singer, the audience sings along directly. With hits like “Guten Morgen” and “Wir muss raus hier raus” (“We have to get out of here”) they are sure of the lyrics and roar during the “Rauch-Haus-Song”: “This is our house”.
The Kreuzberg band Il Civeto will also play a small concert and sing their hit “Rio-Reiser-Platz”, which brought the square into pop culture a year before it was renamed.
The square that now bears Reiser’s name is on Oranienstraße with many pubs, bars and clubs in the middle of SO 36. That’s what the area is still called by many, the name came from the old postal delivery area of Southeast 36.
In Berlin, the idea of honoring Rio Reiser accordingly had been around for a long time. The plans of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office were published in the official gazette in April 2021. There were four objections from local residents. These were rejected as inadmissible in October.
Protests are also visible on Sunday. On one of the new signs there is a sticker with the inscription “Hohn Scheine Erben” and on the advertising pillar in the middle of the square it says “Heini stays” in bold white letters. From one of the adjoining apartments, a man is holding a sign that reads: “The renaming of Heinrichplatz will cost 35,000 euros.”
The decision was controversial, for example because the male-dominated list of streets and squares should actually be loosened up by women’s names. So far he has neglected this goal. A total of 28 streets and squares have been renamed or renamed since 2005 – only a good half of them after women. Currently, the proportion of women in street names in Kreuzberg is just under ten percent. The district justified the renaming of Heinrichplatz by saying that the musician, who died in 1996, was queer.
