May Ayim — born Sylvia Andler — was a poet, educator, and activist.

 

Born to unmarried Ghanaian and German parents, and thus becoming a ward of the state, she was adopted by a family who renamed her May Opitz. She graduated high school in Münster and attended the University of Regensburg for her degree in Psychology and Education. Her thesis was the first-ever scholarly study of Afro-German history ("Afro-German" being a term coined by US Black feminist writer Audre Lorde, who lectured in Berlin from the late 1980s to the early 1990s). It formed the basis for a book, which would be published in English as Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out in 1986.

 

She co-founded Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland, an organisation to support the Black community in Germany. After travelling to Ghana in 1992 and meeting her biological father, she took his surname and starting going by May Ayim. In 1995, Ayim published her first poetry collection, posthumously translated into English in 2003 as blues in black and white. Her style uses all-lowercase, which is especially notable in the German language where all nouns are capitalised.

 

In 1996, Ayim suffered a mental and physical breakdown, was admitted to a psychiatric ward, and was later diagnosed with MS. Continuing to struggle with depression after being advised to stop medical treatment, she eventually died by suicide.

 

May-Ayim-Ufer is one of the success stories from the movement to rename Berlin streets after Black activists, rather than figures glorifying Germany’s colonial past. It was officially renamed in 2010.

 

 

Sources:

Wikipedia (1, 2, 3)