Keupstraße

Keupstraße lies in Cologne-Mülheim, on the right bank of the Rhine, and is a little over 400 metres long. Since the 1970s migrant shops, restaurants and workshops have shaped the street; authorities and media long described it as a “Brennpunkt” (trouble spot) and a “Parallelgesellschaft” (parallel society).

On 9 June 2004 the NSU detonated a nail bomb in front of a hairdresser’s on Keupstraße; 22 people were injured. The investigations turned on the street itself: for years those affected were treated as suspects, and a racist motive was ruled out. Since the NSU exposed itself in 2011, remembrance has been contested on Keupstraße: at the Birlikte festival, which began on the tenth anniversary in 2014, and over a memorial that has still not been built.

Çağan Varol has studied the problematisation of Keupstraße since the recruitment stop of 1973, historically, genealogically and ethnographically: how did a street become a “problem area”? What part did social work, security agencies and urban development play? And how did entrepreneurial spatial and urban strategies materialise, from upgrading and displacement to the festivalisation of remembrance? He defended his dissertation on this at Hochschule München in June 2026; in December 2026 “Rassifizierte Topographien” is due from transcript.