A street in Hamburg has been named in memory of Süleyman Taşköprü, who was shot in an NSU store. But you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t know it.
1 star from Süleyman Taşköprü Illustration: Jeong Hwa-min
Hamburg Taz | A small group stands on a narrow sidewalk beneath a street sign with white letters on a blue background. The grass is unmowed and shady, with a few pieces of trash lying around, and a maple tree provides some shade. Behind the high barbed wire fence lies the former empty concentration camp of the now-closed wholesale market. The constant roar of cars and trucks pushing along the nearby Stresemannstrasse toward the Hamburg Elbe Tunnel. Across the street: a boxy new building.. An unimportant street in the Bahrenfeld district. Only the name is irrelevant. It is Taşköprüstrasse.
Süleyman Taşköprü was shot dead in a grocery store on 27 June 2001 by Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt. He was the third victim of the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), which murdered 10 people across the country between 2000 and 2007. And 11 years ago, Hamburg became the first city to name a street after a victim of the NSU murders.
In June 2013, the Altona district council decided to rename part of Kohlentwiete street. However, due to the small number of residents, it is only about 600 meters long. There is only one large office building on the corner, and its tenants tried to prevent the street from being renamed. They didn’t succeed. And the wholesale market. The new building, the so-called Kühnehöfe, was not yet built at that time, it was just a wasteland.
At that time, many of the NSU murder sites had already been marked with memorials. “But we believe that naming a street would have a greater impact on the public,” said Yusuf Undag, a Green Party member of the district council at the time. Today, few people pass by this place because there is nothing here, no cafes, no shops, only a gas station with a car wash.
City Tour “Right-Wing Violence”
This Thursday evening, the group standing in front of the street sign separating Kohlentwiete from Taşköprüstrasse is taking a city tour on the theme of “right-wing violence and the NSU complex.” But if you don’t know who Süleyman Taşköprü is and who killed him, you won’t find out on Taşköprü Street. At the street’s inauguration – while the wholesale market’s waste collection area was still open, glass bottles clanked in boxes, and forklifts were moving around – a sign explaining the street’s location was attached to the street sign. The name comes from that. Today, that’s missing.
At least the street sign itself has been replaced, as the sediya (the left-curved check mark under the s in Taşköprü) was missing in the first version. At the other end of the short street, on a corner where traffic is constantly rushing, there is a note: Taşköprüstrasse: after Süleyman T. (1970–2001). Kaufmann, a victim of the right-wing extremist terrorist group NSU in Hamburg-Barenfeld.
The question remains as to why it had to be this unrelated street. The murder of Süleyman Taşköprü was committed not here, but on a busy parallel street. Crossing between the new buildings, you reach Schützenstrasse. Taşköprüs had a grocery store at number 39, and Mundlos and Böhnhardt shot Süleyman Taşköprü in the head several times. His father found his son dead in the store when he returned from buying olives. The police launched an offensive against the family at the time, and investigators interviewed about 30 relatives and friends of the family after the murder. The investigation did not include a racist motive for the murder.
Houseplants behind the window
Today, the former Taşköprüs store houses a dealership, and the former salesroom has tables and potted plants behind large windows. Outside, on the left side of the wall of the neighboring building, there is a memorial made of two black stones, each with a sign. On one side, the names of the murdered people, the date of their death, and the city in which they died are written in white on a black background. On the other side, there is a statement that does not mention the words “National Socialist underground” or “racism” and ends with the phrase “Never again.” To date, Hamburg is the only federal state where the NSU murders have not set up a parliamentary commission to investigate.
In front of the two stone monuments, a star is embedded in the ground, and the participants of the small town tour silently place two red roses on them. Some passersby slow down and watch. In the center of the star is a photo of Süleyman Taşköprü. As you can see, he looks like actor Sylvester Stallone, was a fan of his, and joked with his sister Ayşen that if he died before her, they would want a star like Hollywood Boulevard. He has one now.
