No More ‘Enver Pasha Bridge’ in Potsdam after Complaint

Finally, in mid-October, an Official Notice signed by the Lord Mayor was released. It stated, the name “Enver Pasha Bridge” will be “officially retracted and deleted from the street directory.” The reason given for the decision is not political, and its formulation reflects the Aristotelian logic that Günther had suggested. It reads: “The original bridge was blown up in April 1945 and as a result is no longer there. The construction currently associated with this name is a 1970s-erected electrical supply line on steel girders, which however has no transport function. Since the actual bridge therefore no longer exists and the current supply bridge requires no name, the name still partially being used is groundless and nonfunctional…. [Therefore] it clearly must be revoked and deleted from all official directories.” In a departure from normal procedure, the declaration makes absolutely no mention of the City Council’s resolution which was the basis for the administration’s decision, nor of its motivation – a fact that Günther finds “scandalous.” The official announcement is duly signed by Lord Mayor Mike Schubert (SPD).

Günther pursued the issue further, demanding that the name be removed also from Google maps and all other representations of the location. Discussion then focused on the name to be given a future bridge.

Enver Pasha in Potsdam

One might wonder what the Ottoman War Minister had to do with Potsdam in the first place. Roy Knocke, director of the Lepsius House in Potsdam, gave some background to the matter in an interview published September 21, 2023 in the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung. Enver had served as military attaché from 1909 to 1912 in the capital of the Brandenburg province of the German Empire. Fluent in German, Enver was, in Knocke’s characterization, “a kind of Ottoman superstar in Imperial Germany,” or a “poster boy for the German-Ottoman friendship,” whose center was in the Babelsberg area where the bridge was located. There was even a big tobacco factory in Berlin named after Enver at the time. That the name should be deleted is “an imperative” for Knocke, in the interests of a true culture of remembrance. In 2000, discussion had begun around a new name, and of course, that of Johannes Lepsius was suggested. Lepsius, Knocke recalled, had fought against repression of the Armenians already during the 1890s Hamidian massacres and, in 1915/16 in Potsdam, compiled his documentation of the genocide committed by the Young Turk regime. He distributed the work widely but failed to shift Imperial Germany’s policy, due to the wartime alliance.

Andreas Fritsche, writing in nd-aktuell on November 11, noted that right after the armistice in 1918, Enver was among a group of Young Turk perpetrators who escaped aboard a German submarine, thanks to General Hans von Seeckt, one of their close allies. They made it to Berlin, where they lived in comfortable exile under assumed names. Interior Minister Talaat Pasha was shot dead in Berlin by a member of the Nemesis group, Soghomon Tehlirian in 1921, whereas Enver traveled to the Caucasus to lead a military campaign to establish a “pan-Turanian” empire, and was killed in 1922.

A new bridge was supposed to be built but the East German Communist regime put up the notorious wall dividing Berlin in 1961, and that nullified construction plans. Although the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, no new bridge has replaced it. There is talk of construction in 2027. And therefore, of a new name. Knocke and Günther have initiated discussion, and proposed, in addition to Lepsius, the name of an anti-Nazi resistance fighter from the area. What is important, Günther stresses, is that the location be identified as a place of remembrance.

Remembrance or Denial

Removal of this mass murderer’s name is a victory (notwithstanding the curious nature of the WSA’s linguistic acrobatics), one that its political initiator Anja Günther and those supporting her motion in the Social Democratic (SPD), Green (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), and Left parties can be proud of. But more remains to be done in the interest of remembrance.

Not far from Potsdam, in the federal capital Berlin, is a cemetery where other Young Turk perpetrators lie in honored graves. They are Bahaeddin Sakir, leader of the Special Organization, and Cemal Asmi Bey, known as the “Butcher of Trebizond.” Both had been condemned to death by the Constantinople trials, in absentia; they had escaped on board the same ship as Enver, and lived under assumed names in Berlin. Members of Nemesis killed them together on April 17, 1922. Their graves, richly renovated in 2011, are in the Sehitlik (Martyrs’) Cemetery (formerly Islamic Cemetery). Interior Minister Talaat Pasha had also been buried there until the Nazi regime returned his remains to Turkey in 1943. Any attempt to alter their location or status would be in vain, given that the cemetery is sovereign Turkish territory, purchased in 1921 and administered by the Turkish Defense Ministry.

Against this background, it is understandable that in her formal inquiry regarding implementation of the decision to remove Enver Pasha’s name, Anja Günther asked whether there had been Turkish intervention. As journalist Fritsche recalled in his article, Turkish influence had previously censored references to the Armenian genocide. He writes that in 2005, Matthias Platzeck (SPD), while governor of Brandenburg, had dinner with the then-Turkish Consul General Aydin Durusay, following which “the Armenian genocide disappeared from the syllabus and course plan for history classes in the federal state of Brandenburg.” There followed protests by Armenians, historians, and political figures; in the end a pledge was made to include it, along with other examples of genocide.