The controversial “Mohrenkopf” inscription in Zurich is not medieval at all

A few days ago, the appeals court in the building ruled in favor of Zurich’s internal security service and banned the city of Zurich from covering two inscriptions with a racist context in Niederdorf. “Zum Mohrenkopf” at Neumarkt 13 and “Zum Mohrentanz” at Niederdorfstrasse 29. They are “important for the appearance of the two houses” and therefore worth preserving. Evidence of an old Zurich before our time.

A study has now been published on behalf of the Presidential Section of the City of Zurich of the ETH. They were written by Bernhard C. Schär, professor of history at the University of Lausanne, and Ashkira Darman, historian at the Realgymnasium Rämibühl. Title: “Zurich ‘Mohren’ Fantasies: A Structural and Conceptual Historical Interpretation, c. 1400-2022”. The realization: As they are today, the two inscriptions are by no means from a distant past, but from the 20th century.

Both houses “received new facades in the 1820s, which have since been renovated several times. The medieval appearance and essential parts of the building structures almost completely disappeared,” says the study. The house «Zum Mohrentanz» was called «Zum Berentanz» for a while, in several renovation plans there is no indication of an inscription and in some photos they have not been found for decades.

Zurich is a city. And a city is constantly changing, there is no purity law for old buildings, even Notre Dame in Paris turned out to be a patchwork of different parts of the building from different eras after it burned down. And as is well known, the Reformation turned brightly colored churches into bare prayer halls.

The current appearance of the two inscriptions in the Niederdorf goes back to an effort that can be described as the “invention of the old town”. In the 19th century, wealthy city dwellers liked to retreat to the suburbs or the countryside, the inner cities changed, as many working-class families as possible shared the once stately homes and sanitary conditions deteriorated. In the 20th century, the protection of local heritage and the preservation of monuments was instituted and Zurich was gripped by a Ballenberg addiction. The “Dörfli” became a place of longing intended to bring an old, picturesque Zurich back to life. And that included the “Mohren” inscriptions.

Traditionally, the new-build homes were given a name instead of a house number and usually also a photo, residents and authorities (for example, the tax collectors) could orient themselves in this way, a name change was not appreciated, the “Zum Mohrenkopf”, for example, would have In the 19th century they preferred to live in a « fox », that was forbidden to them.

And what was the “Mohr” about? Above all, the study explains, the “Mohrenkopf” was derived from the Christian Crusades: the severed head of a pagan opponent (as it also appears on the flags of Sardinia and Corsica) was a sign of power and superiority. And even though the builders of a total of nine houses, all of which had a “Mohr” in their name, did not participate in crusades, the names of their houses suggested a very specific Christian status consciousness.

The reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) brought the “Moor” into everyday language consciousness with his “Zurich Bible”. He wrote that it was as impossible for a black person to wash off the color of his skin as it was for a leopard to wash off his spots. Over time, his concept changed from “Mohren washing” to “money laundering”.

The Zurich clergyman and physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) also had nothing but contempt: “The snub nose and pursed lips of the Moor testify to the fire in his eyes of a strange mixture of dull animality in the intellectual and stronger passion in the physical sense”, he wrote in 1775. Incidentally, the first German translation of Shakespeare’s “Othello” had just appeared in Zurich. The play about a noble black man who becomes a murderous animal out of jealousy. And the play that institutionalized blackface performance practice.

The very exciting work of Schär and Darman shows that the term “Mohren” has a long and rich history of racism, especially in Zurich. And that, in turn, there is something very fleeting about urban architecture. How the two interact or not will be determined after this groundbreaking investigation.