Until now, the German Navy base in Kiel has also been known as Tirpitzhafen. Now this name is to disappear and the site will officially be known as the Kiel-Wik naval base. Other incriminating names are also to be replaced by names that commemorate neutral persons or persons associated with the German resistance. The Scheermole will thus become the Oskar-Kusch-Mole. This is to honour First Lieutenant Oskar Kusch, a submarine commander during the Second World War, who attracted attention in the navy for his dissident remarks and was executed on the firing range in Kiel-Holtenau in 1944. The Tirpitzmole also loses its name and is to be named after the poet Gorch Fock (actually Johann Wilhelm Kinau) in future.
The renaming goes back to an instruction from the Inspector of the Navy to review all existing names of barracks and infrastructure elements for their worthiness of tradition in the sense of the Tradition Decree and, where necessary, to initiate a renaming. The tradition decree published in 2017 stipulates that the entire Bundeswehr's understanding of tradition should be based on its own history of over sixty years and its resistance to dictatorships and tyranny.
Text: mb; Photo: Bw/Björn Wilke
English 
German
I was standing on the Tirpitz pier at the beginning of December 1997, waiting for the Gorch Fock and my son, at about 10 degrees below zero.
An experience I will never forget. The renaming could only have been ordered by someone with no connection to the navy.
A member of my family served as a sailor in the Imperial Navy on the Gneisenau.
This kind of nonsense only exists in Germany
Incomprehensible. Then Wilhelmshaven would also have to be renamed...
Unbelievable for me...