The Wrzburger Street Names Commission has given many town and community residents work in Lower Franconia. For four years, from 2016 to 2020, the commission examined the biographies of around 120 street namesake. In the end, the members of the commission recommended in nine cases that the streets named after those concerned be renamed or at least that explanatory information be given. One of these nine is the writer Nikolaus Fey (1881-1956). A street in the Albertshausen district of Bad Kissingen is named after him.
The local poet is one of those candidates to whom the Wrzburg commission recommended that his street be renamed in the Heidingsfeld district. Fey’s involvement in the National Socialist regime was so deep, the commission finds, that the recommendation was even unanimous, which was not the case with all candidates. The commission also considers it appropriate to rename Heinrich Dikreiter, the founding director of the City Gallery Wrzburg, the composer Carl Schadewitz and the founder of the Mozart Festival, Hermann Zilcher. These three names are not immortalized on street signs in Bad Kissingen.
Contextualization with Richard Strauss
In the case of the composer Richard Strauss, whose name bears a street in the Kissinger Musikerviertel, the commission only suggests a so-called “contextualization”. This should be done through detailed information in electronic media and appropriate notices on the street sign. The recommendations of Karl Ritter von Frisch, Armin Knab, Peter Schneider and Michael Cardinal Faulhaber, after whom no streets in Bad Kissingen are named, are less categorical.
The clear recommendation of the Wrzburger Street Names Commission with regard to Nikolaus Fey does not automatically mean that the discussion would also play a role in Bad Kissingen. One knows the subject, confirmed Thomas Hack, the press spokesman for the town hall. But it has not officially reached the city council. Unlike in Bergtheim (district of Wrzburg), where the local greens approached the community with an application to rename Nikolas-Fey-Strasse, no one here has formally addressed the issue.
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Other cities are already further in the discussion
Karlstadt and Lohr are already further. The mayors of the two cities in Main-Spessart want themselves and their city councilors to deal with Nikolaus Fey’s role in National Socialism. There are also streets named after the writer in Gerolzhofen, where Fey died in 1956, in the municipality of Steinfeld (Main-Spessart), in Dingolshausen and in Schwebheim (both districts of Schweinfurt). The list does not claim to be complete.
The fact that the Wrzburg commission came to the unanimous opinion that the name Nikolaus Fey was not suitable for naming a street has to do with indications that the local poet was a “convinced National Socialist”. He had already joined the party on May 1, 1933, had completed training courses, appeared as the party’s official speaker and held the office of Lower Franconian representative for the Reich Chamber of Literature. His work in the Propaganda Department of the Government of the General Government of Poland from 1942 to 1944 also proves that he was not just a fellow traveler, but an active officer.
Carl-Diem-Strasse was to be renamed
For Bad Kissingen, discussions about renaming streets that honor people too deeply involved in National Socialism are not new. In 2003, the then city council decided to rename the street in the Reiterswiesen district, named after the sports official Carl Diem. The decision was never implemented. Back then, the city did not want to expect the residents of the street to undertake the effort involved in renaming, recalls press spokesman Thomas Hack.
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