In Germany, after a lull began a new offensive in popular historical pharmacy brand “The moor”. As writes Die Welt, this time the refugee Council of Lower Saxony, formally requested to remove all such signage in the region as “racist.” But at the same time to rename all the streets that have retained the name old word “moor” in the Middle ages refers to immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.
the head of the Board Kai Weber stated that this name “hang labels on people”, which is unacceptable in a modern society, where “significantly increased the sensitivity to manifestations of racism in language.” The owner of “Moorish pharmacies” in Wolfsburg Mrs. Peter Grunwald, whose family business was under threat of collapse, trying to fend off the attacks. According to the businesswoman, which with the filing of the Diaspora recorded in the “racist”, the historical name dates back to the days when Europe was valued drugs from the East, and therefore it does not humiliate people of other nationalities, but, on the contrary, pays tribute to the first pharmacists-foreigners. If she would have to change the sign, the awareness and popularity of pharmacies will fall sharply.
Informed “RG” wrote about the attacks on the “Moorish pharmacies” in other cities of Germany. By the way, in 2018, the owner of the house “At the moor on Zile (the so-called main street of Frankfurt – approx. “RG”),” Alexander Schwartz was even willing to compromise. However, to rename the pharmacy failed, because it is a historic building dedicated to the “Moorish” reasons.
One of these houses of the 17th century, the correspondent of “RG” admired Moorish alley in Erfurt. Its timber-framed, toy-like facade decorated with two bas-reliefs of heads with open mouths in the holes of the medieval owners, the brewers put the fresh bundles of hay that served as a is drink. The house is called “The Moorish heads” – rename it, as the lane until nobody comes. Well, a little further and you’ll Erfurt pharmacy “The moor”. Behind the glass at the entrance – a figure of the pageboy in black trousers and turban. The pharmacist shared with “RG”, that they recently exert pressure with the requirement to remove the “traces of colonialism”, but the owners still holding on.
By the way, with the replacement of names the Germans have also not worked. Recently the DMV of Berlin ordered to rename the metro station called Moorish street in the Street Glinka, which is also located nearby. However, it would seem, has solved the case again stalled after German tabloid Bild has accused the famous Russian composer, stayed often in Berlin, and died there in 1857, in… anti-Semitism. It got to the point that the Minister of education, science and culture of Schleswig-Holstein, Karin P��Ian’s on Twitter and even called the author of the Opera “a life for the Tsar” neither more nor less than “an anti-Semite-Communist”, to which Mikhail Ivanovich, of course, would be greatly surprised.
How to recognize the German scientists (for example, the anthropologist and Africanist Wulf Schmidt-Wulff in his work “Ten little Indians: the history of racial discrimination in children’s books”), a pharmaceutical brand “In the moor”, became popular in Germany in the 16th century, had nothing to do with racism in the modern sense. Historians have no clear opinion about how was born the bond between the pharmaceutical industry and “Mori” (by the way, already in the 17th century, the word is out of date and was perceived as an archaism). According to one version, it’s all about the iconography of one of the three wise men “kings from the East” who came with gifts to worship the newborn Jesus. Caspar, who brought to the manger myrrh, or myrrh, European painters just about this time, began to portray blacks. Well, in the Middle ages, the resin obtained from African and Arabian trees, was considered a medicinal drug, so that in the popular imagination “the moor” Caspar was associated with medicine. We should not forget about the General aura of magic that surrounded “the whole East”. In addition, doctors from the Middle East and Africa was largely controlled by the medical industry and medical supplies in Europe, so the brand “The moor” became a kind of mark of quality – just as “Lion pharmacy” was associated with progressive at the time of the Persian medicine and pharmacy of the elephant with the Indian.
Among the first “Moorish pharmacy” appeared in Regenburg in 1517 as a family enterprise. In 1892 one of these pharmacies was granted the official title by the decision of the court of Grand Duke of Hesse Ernst Ludwig. Today, throughout Germany there are about one hundred pharmacies under the guise of “The moor”, however, according to the magazine Focus, for economic reasons they were on the verge of extinction, like other brick and mortar pharmaceutical institutions.
