Introduction

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was never a central nexus of enslavement and slave trading. Nevertheless, a large number of enslaved people were brought into the empire from different parts of the world between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. There were essentially three slavery complexes extending into the German lands: One was the Mediterranean and Black Sea slaving networks, through which enslaved Africans, Eastern Europeans, Caucasians, Tatars or subjects of the Ottoman empire arrived in German principalities. The others were Atlantic and Indian Ocean slaving, which accompanied and fueled European colonial expansion and globalizing mercantile networks. Recent research in particular has brought to the fore the integration of German territories into transatlantic economic networks that provided the Atlantic slave trade with textiles, tools, weapons, copper, bullion, credit, and of course numerous sailors and soldiers. In the eighteenth century, the Atlantic slave trade as a source of enslaved persons eclipsed the Mediterranean slavery networks, albeit without ever completely replacing them.

The numbers of enslaved persons in the early modern Holy Roman Empire are difficult to ascertain, and a meaningful quantitative study is still lacking. Certainly, their demographics were very different from those of the slave populations on the Iberian Peninsula, where hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans formed an omnipresent part of urban society from the fifteenth until well into the nineteenth century (see the chapter by Giulia Bonazza in this volume). There were very likely also significantly fewer slaves in the Holy Roman Empire than in Britain or France. An exhibition in Stuttgart in 2001 documented the presence of fifty so-called “Moors” in Württemberg from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Similarly, a maximum of two hundred people of African descent may have lived in Vienna during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—many of them enslaved. In an extensive but by no means all-embracing study of “Court Moors” in 2013, Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov identified three hundred and eighty individuals brought to Germany, a majority of them of African or African American origin. More recent research has led to the identification of many more individuals, both in early modern courts and beyond. In addition, large numbers of enslaved captives entered the empire as a result of wars and raiding unfolding along the imperial and religious fault lines crisscrossing the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Black Sea region, and Western Asia. Campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in particular produced large numbers of captives. During the siege of Buda in 1686 alone, the participating German forces took a staggering 2325 prisoners, both soldiers and civilians, many of whom ended up in German lands. Although only fragmentary sources are available, it is clear that the total numbers of captives were formidable. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, parish registers recorded 651 baptisms of Muslims in Vienna alone, and another five hundred in other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Since only a minority of Muslim captives converted, their actual numbers were likely considerably higher.1

Being readily available as property to be bought or sold facilitated the entrance of enslaved men, women, and children into German territories. There, however, slavery was not an institution that necessarily defined their social positions, spheres of action, occupations, and prospects the same way it did in colonial slave societies. The scarce and scattered sources often reveal next to no information on the status of such individuals and how they were perceived. The most accessible sources come from court archives in which payrolls, correspondences, and petitions have survived. So-called “Moors” were also depicted in visual media, figuring as servants, pages, or subordinate familiars in portraits of monarchs and nobles. In addition, there is a smattering of printed sources like baptismal sermons or court calendars. Enslaved individuals not employed at court usually left barely any traces in the archives. Parish registers sometimes provide information on non-European individuals—but only for those who were baptized, married, or died in a German principality. As a result, there has been an enduring debate among German historians regarding the existence of slavery within the Holy Roman Empire. Some have argued that slaves bought by Germans were automatically redeemed or became free upon baptism, while others consider the status of the affected individuals to be fundamentally ambivalent. Recent studies have been able to prove the existence of slavery quite unequivocally while at the same time emphasizing the variety and complexity of the history of enslavement within the early modern Holy Roman Empire.2

When thinking about slavery, early modern Germans themselves most likely envisioned enslaved Christians. Popular captivity narratives, church sermons, the activities of ransoming orders like the Trinitarians, and the government-managed ransoming funds (Sklavenkassen) in Hanseatic port cities all helped to establish the trope of the unlucky Christian enslaved by North African corsairs or Ottoman armies. It must be kept in mind that for centuries, the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe and the southeastern marchlands of the Habsburg Empire were slaving frontiers for North African and Ottoman raiders, making the threat of captivity very real for soldiers, mariners, or sea travelers. And while the supposed “Turkish danger” never reached beyond the gates of Vienna, its menacing shadow haunted the imagination of German readers for a long time.3

By contrast, the Atlantic slave trade and the enslavement of African and Asian people in the Indian Ocean seemed a distant matter. Germans were involved in colonial ventures that made use of the slave trade and the plantation economy, but this activity represented what has been characterized as “colonialism by proxy.” Since there was no German colonial empire before the second half of the nineteenth century, knowledge of the colonies held significantly less importance and was not as widely disseminated in the Holy Roman Empire as it was in places like Britain, France, Spain, or Portugal. Combined with the specters of Christian captivity and Muslim slaving, this reinforced the comforting (though false) notion that Germans had no part in slave trading and slavery: While early modern Germans readily expected to find slavery outside of (Christian) Europe, they hardly reckoned to encounter it amongst themselves. This bias may consequently have informed their perceptions of enslaved individuals in Germany.

The entry on slavery in the German-language encyclopedia Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon (published from 1731 to 1754) focuses almost exclusively on enslaved Christians in North Africa. West Indian plantation slavery is mentioned only in passing, asserting that the fate of enslaved Africans in the West Indies was considerably less unpleasant than that endured by Christians in North Africa. Only the entry on “Nigritien” (“the country of the Blacks”) discussed the trafficking of Africans to America. The anonymous author vehemently defended the slave trade, claiming that the enslavement of Africans was solely a result of internecine warfare and the desire for financial gain. Employing a cynical but common argumentative volte, he reasoned that Christian slave traders were actually saving the enslaved from a much worse fate—namely, being slaves of Satan—than the one they were to experience in the West Indies. In general, the entries in Zedler’s encyclopedia reveal a limited familiarity with contemporary colonization and slavery practices.4

After 1760, following the trend toward abolitionist criticism elsewhere in Europe, the Atlantic slave trade began to assume a more central position in the mind of German-speaking publicists and the reading public. But even during the final decade of the eighteenth century, many still believed that Germans “had never sullied themselves by participating in this trade.”5 The notion that enslavement and the slave trade were confined to the history of former maritime powers and colonial states like Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, or Portugal along with American nations like the United States or Brazil has proven to be quite persistent in Germany as well as in other successor states of the Holy Roman Empire.

Entry of Enslaved Persons into the Holy Roman Empire

The moment of the transfer of power over enslaved persons is significant. In the situation where a person enters into the possession of another, enslavement as a practice and its acceptance become irrefutably apparent. Slaves arriving in the Holy Roman Empire had typically become enslaved outside of it—in locations in Africa, Asia, somewhere at sea, along the coasts of the Mediterranean—or had been born into slavery. They would often have been traded or exchanged between different proprietors several times before ending up in German territories. This was different for the captives taken in the wars against the Ottoman Empire insofar as their captivity was often limited. Depending on their rank and financial means, they were ransomed or exchanged for Christians. The processing of captives taken by German forces during their campaigns against the Ottomans in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was increasingly handled by military officials. Unlucky individuals who were not exchanged or had no means to raise a ransom are often labeled as slaves in the sources. Many of them were put up for sale on slave markets—not only in frontier regions, but in German territories as well. In addition, significant numbers of captives were carried away by individual officers or soldiers as spoils of war.6

In the Holy Roman Empire, the procurement of slaves was not motivated by a need for enslaved labor. The tasks performed by slaves elsewhere—fieldwork, hard labor, or household service—were easily filled through existing practices of labor organization. Rather, it was primarily persons regarded as dark-skinned and usually labeled “Moors” who were sought as representative servants. In the sixteenth century, enslaved persons were exchanged through interconnected networks of long-distance merchants and the nobility from Italy and the Iberian kingdoms to courts and towns north of the Alps. For example, between 1569 and 1575, Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria purchased “Moors” and “Turks” (and “Dwarfs”) for his court in Landshut. He employed the services of the Fuggers in Lisbon and Hamburg as well as business partners and agents in Milan and Genoa for this purpose. After the Thirty Years’ War, the demand for “Moors” rapidly increased when minor courts and individual nobles began to add such servants to their staff as well. With transatlantic networks gaining importance in the seventeenth century, enslaved persons arrived in the Empire via Dutch, Danish, and British trading routes. Still, the process of acquiring slaves rarely followed direct lines; instead, it was often a haphazard, episodic affair. This made enslaved individuals an expensive commodity of infrequent availability. They were brought singly, by twos or threes, or in small groups by ship captains, merchants, soldiers, missionaries, and others traveling from the colonies. An example is Christian Real, a trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Württemberg. He was originally brought to Germany by Joß Kramer, a German officer in the Swedish Africa Company in 1657. Kramer had Real baptized in Lindau at Lake Constance in a spectacular ceremony. The baptismal sermon by Jacob Fussenegger was published in 1658 and is a valuable source providing information on contemporary perceptions along with glimpses into Real’s life before he arrived in Germany. Upon leaving for the Netherlands, Kramer presented Christian Real to a friend, who in turn gifted him to Duke Eberhard of Württemberg.7

Another avenue was provided by Portuguese merchants, many of them Jews or so-called New Christians, settling in Stade, Hamburg, Glücksstadt, or Bremen accompanied by enslaved servants. In 1680, the Glücksstadt merchant Moyses Josua Henriques, who employed four enslaved Africans in his own household, recalled how his parents “like other citizens, either of the Portuguese or other nations, had had Moors in their service or used them as needed.” Illustrating the scarcity and demand for “Moors,” one of Henriques’ slaves was abducted—with the perpetrator being a Lieutenant Colonel von Richelieu, no less.8

A case evidencing the random availability of “Moors” or slaves from other parts of the world is that of two enslaved Native Americans, Ocktscha Rinscha and Tuski Stannaki, who were dragged through half of Europe between 1719 and 1723. They—or rather their tattooed bodies—were presented in taverns as well as to kings and queens. In Dresden, they were eventually sold to Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and added to his court. Because of the infrequent availability of so-called “Moors” even in the eighteenth century, princes or nobles keen to acquire prestigious servants often had agents scouring places like London, Amsterdam, or Copenhagen, or placed orders with merchant houses there. The latter in turn often contracted with slaving ship captains, and some merchants apparently specialized in the slave-trading business. In 1703, Jonathan Belcher, who visited the Hanoverian court at Herrenhausen, was told of a man in Kassel who allegedly supplied the court with slaves. Frederick II, the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, used the services of the Amsterdam banker and slaver Jean de Barry Daniels to acquire at least five “Moors” for his court. Official slaving companies transported only a relatively small number of enslaved persons to Germany: No more than twenty-four “Moors” delivered by the short-lived Brandenburg African American Company to the Prussian court between 1699 and 1717 have been identified.9

Mariners, especially sea captains of slaving ships, occupied a special position in the procurement of enslaved people for service at Central European courts.10 They received commissions, which were sometimes paid in slaves, or engaged in the slave trade themselves. Small numbers of enslaved individuals thus arrived on slaving ships in London, Amsterdam, Middelstadt, Glücksstadt, Stade, Copenhagen, or other port cities linked to the slave trade, from where they were taken to destinations in the Holy Roman Empire. In 1757, captain Jan Michelsen brought a young “Moor” he had purchased “during a public auction in Suriname” to the German North Sea island of Sylt. Likewise returning from Suriname in 1764, the farrier Johann Jacob Dreuzler gave an enslaved boy as a present to Duke Karl Eugen of Baden-Württemberg. The child was lodged with the “Chamber Moor” Joseppi Pietro delli Santo Belli. These cases are also typical in that the Dutch colony of Suriname became especially important as a source region by the second half of the eighteenth century since many Germans were active there as plantation owners and overseers.11

In exchanges between courts, noble families, or wealthy merchants, “Moors,” “Turks,” “Tatars,” or Native Americans were certainly gifts intended to showcase status and increase the prestige of both the giver and recipient. But it was not always an exchange between equals: Sometimes, slaves were used by those of lesser status to elevate their standing by way of an extraordinary gift. For example, when Jonathan Belcher, heir of a rich New England merchant, presented Sophia of Hanover with an enslaved Native American he had named Io and brought from Boston, it was a gesture intended to demonstrate Belcher’s access to the highest circles of Europe’s aristocracy and his personal friendship with the electress.12 In some cases, these enslaved servants and wards had become a burden to their masters, who looked for ways to get rid of them while at the same time trying to make sure they were provided for. Carl von Imhoff, an officer and painter with the British East India Company, brought along two enslaved children when he came back to Germany in 1774. Short of funds, he soon became desperate to sell or give away the “little Moors” and was eventually able to place them at the Weimar court. A mixture of both motivations may have been at work in the case of the “black Malabar” Samuel Johannes Felix: In 1743, the ship’s surgeon Christian Dober returned to Germany after serving with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Accompanying him was a thirteen-year-old slave named Felix. Dober intended to join the Moravian Church and “gifted” Felix to Countess Erdmuthe Dorothea von Zinzendorf, wife of Moravian leader Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, before settling in Herrnhut in Upper Lusatia. Felix was subsequently put in a Moravian school in the Wetterau region near Frankfurt, was baptized Samuel Johannes, and received training as a tailor.13

There are significant imbalances in the age and gender distributions of enslaved people entering the Holy Roman Empire. Those trafficked from the African Coast, the West Indies, or North and South America were usually children below the age of twelve. The recipients often seem to have been regarded as wardens of these children, responsible for their education as well as their religious instruction. Furthermore, children may have been considered more easily able to adapt to the foreign social surroundings they encountered in Germany and learn to fill the roles and functions assigned to them—as wards as well as pious converts, prestigious servants, and loyal subordinates. There was also a significantly greater proportion of men. In a quantitative analysis of a sample of 380 so-called “Moors” in Germany—most of them employed at courts or in military positions—males accounted for more than eighty percent. The gender distribution among Ottoman captives brought to the Holy Roman Empire seems to have been slightly less unbalanced, with around half of them being women and children.14

Forms and Experiences of Enslavement in the Holy Roman Empire

In the Holy Roman Empire, slavery was not an unambiguous and immutable category. In the Dutch and Danish West Indies, on the other hand—from where many enslaved persons were brought to the empire—being assigned to the category “Black” translated into being a slave. Qualifiers like “free people of color,” respectively “vrij Neger” in Dutch or “frineger” in Danish, were used to describe manumitted individuals and their descendants. In the colonial environment, the social position of enslaved persons was narrowly defined, as were the types of labor they performed and the manner in which they were expected to conduct themselves. Obviously, the connection between a normative system and social realities is complex—but what is important here is that such a “place” of slavery did not exist in Germany, and neither did forms of labor linked solely to slavery and therefore bearing its stigma. Also, the perceived color of a person’s skin was not an essential marker of enslavement like it was in the West Indies. After all, enslaved Tatars as well as enslaved captives from the Balkans could be encountered in German territories. Whether a person was enslaved or not was therefore difficult to infer from visual markers alone.

Generally, individuals enslaved in the Atlantic slaving networks and arriving in early modern Germany experienced a transition from the colonial “slave society” into a “society with (a few) slaves.” Sources tell us little about how this was perceived by the individuals concerned—but their experience clearly differed from that of enslaved people coming out of Mediterranean “societies with slaves,” for whom the change entailed by moving into early modern German society may have been less profound.

The laws and ordinances of German principalities made no explicit provisions for slavery until the late eighteenth century. Since proprietorial claims were very rarely questioned, let alone brought before courts, there was little impetus to regulate the status of slaves in the empire until the late 1700s. And there was certainly no free-soil principle like in France or the Netherlands, which supposedly conveyed freedom to any enslaved entering the respective territory. This by no means translated into a refutation of slavery, however—let alone a nullification of slave status. Rather, the notion of slavery and slave owning was well established in early modern Germany, and there was a considerable amount of legal literature and ample traditions that fully accepted enslavement. To arrive at legal definitions of slavery, German law practitioners and scholars turned to practical applications of Roman law known as usus modernus pandectarum. There was a consensus that Germans could not become another’s property in the sense of the Roman servus, but this did not extend to slaves brought into the empire or to non-Christian captives. The latter could be enslaved in reciprocity (iure retorsionis). Sometimes the rightful enslavement of “Turks” was employed to argue the legitimacy of enslaving so-called “heathen” Africans as well. The important law scholar Ludwig Julius Friedrich Höpfner, in his widely read commentary on Roman law (Theoretisch-praktischer Commentar) of 1783, unequivocally explained that there was a contemporaneous slavery consisting of “true slaves.” These were “Negro slaves” and “captured Turks.” The former, Höpfner went on, “are brought to us from Holland and other empires” and should be “treated according to Roman law.” Another influential jurist, Gustav Hugo, in 1791 rejected the application of Roman law in such cases, instead arguing for full acknowledgment of the possession of slaves based on colonial law. The influential philosopher Christian von Wolff, reflecting on dominion in a rationally ordered society in 1723, legitimized slavery with an awkward rationalist argument, claiming that those who would do harm when free could be enslaved “until they could find happiness in freedom.”15

The vast majority of enslaved persons in early modern Germany found themselves labeled “Moors” or “Blacks.” The German term “Mohr” (“Moor”) was an umbrella term applied to anyone considered dark-skinned by German contemporaries. Until well into the eighteenth century, the term also carried associations with the Muslim world: North Africans of various ethnic backgrounds as well as inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were sometimes referred to as “Moors” regardless of the hue of their skin. Sometimes the word’s meaning was extended to include unlikely candidates: In 1742 in the Moravian Church settlement of Marienborn in the Wetterau region, a “Moors’ love feast” was attended among others by a Tatar and a German Sinto. In 1675, the presence of “a Moor from Chinea [sic] in Asia” is recorded in Speyer. Thus, even though Germans routinely participated in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades as well as the West Atlantic plantation economies by the eighteenth century, the term “Moor” was not limited to Africans but could also be used to designate Muslims, East Indians, or anyone considered to be vaguely “oriental.” It was not associated with a concept of ethnic veracity, but rather with a cosmography structured by religious differences. The term “Neger” (“Negro”), on the other hand, became common in the German language only during the second half of the eighteenth century, bearing testament to the ever closer connection to the Atlantic world and the attendant colonial discourse. Although it never entirely supplanted the older term “Moor,” the two words became increasingly synonymous as time went by. While it may thus be tempting to dismiss “Moor” as a quaint, traditional term of sorts, colonial discourse eventually loaded it with the same racist connotations as “Neger.” What distinguished the former was an enduring association with a function of representative service. The term “Sklave” (“slave”) itself was not particularly common in early modern Germany. Instead, when referring to slaves, the terms “Leibeigene” (serfs) or “Knechte” (servants) were often employed. It is important to emphasize that this did not mean actual serfdom was equated with slavery, as the differences were quite clear—both to scholars and lay people. However, such conflation was sometimes articulated with polemical intent in debates about the abolition of serfdom.16

Slave status also often remained masked by other forms of servitude and dependency. Most enslaved were employed as servants, and the work they did—whether it entailed hauling water or waiting on their masters in embroidered liveries—did not differ from that of other servants. What set them apart was their visibility: Those considered dark-skinned or “Black” by early modern Germans possessed unique representational value, with their bodies communicating a message regarding their masters’ cosmopolitan elegance, wealth, and status. Their alterity was emphasized visually by clothing them in generic “oriental” accoutrements.

In the registers, calendars, and payrolls of early modern courts, these prestigious servants are listed as “Court Moors” or “Chamber Moors.” They usually seem to have received wages, and their positions could bring a measure of respectability, influence, or even power within the court hierarchy. Others were assigned to various other functions like runner, messenger, lackey, groom, etc., which were often staffed with representative foreigners. Still others marched as trumpeters, drummers, or oboists (hautboists) with court processions and served in military units. An example of this was the court of Augustus II, where a number of positions were held by “Moors” and “Turks” of various origins. For grand festivities, soldiers were dressed up in “Turkish style,” creating the illusion of an Ottoman court with Augustus II at its center. Smaller courts throughout Germany sometimes employed a significant number of “Moors” as well. In 1714, Frederick William I of Prussia tried to have a staggering 150 to 170 “Moors” delivered from the trading location Arguim on the West-African coast. They were intended for service as musicians in the Prussian army. Although this plan did not come to fruition, it demonstrates the significance attached to employing such personnel.17

Obviously, the value accorded to so-called “Moors” had repercussions on their status and perception. Eva Lind has aptly characterized their position as one of “privileged dependency”: While “Court Moors” were on equal standing with white servants, drew a salary, and enjoyed numerous benefits, many of them were listed in the lower tiers of the pay registers.For instance, the Württemberg court trumpeter Christian Real only received slightly more than half the wages of his fellow trumpeters. Nevertheless, some such slaves enjoyed remarkable careers: Rudolf August Mohr, purchased by Duke Rudolf August of Württemberg from a Jewish merchant in 1684, was held in high esteem by the ducal family. He eventually married, received a considerable salary, and was granted a pension. After his death, a printed funeral sermon was published. At the Berleburg court, Ferdinand Christian Coridon, originally brought as a slave from Berbice, eventually served in several administrative functions. Two former Ottoman captives, Mahomet and Mustapha, saved the life of Georg Ludwig of Hanover during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, earning themselves positions of trust close to the future king of England. The “Chamber Moor” Ignatius Fortuna was brought from Suriname to Essen in 1730, where he entered the service of Countess Palatine Franziska Christina of Sulzbach and remained there for nearly forty years. He was ranked third among her retinue and became a wealthy man, lending and donating considerable sums. But even such remarkable examples depended on a patron’s support and generosity, and they cannot be regarded as typical.18

Most enslaved individuals would receive at least the rudiments of religious education, and many were baptized, since this was considered a responsibility of any Christian master. Especially for nobles and princes, the baptism of “Moors” or “Turks” provided highly valued opportunities for representation. Indeed, a “missionary impulse” was sometimes part of the motivation for buying a slave in the first place: In 1732, the Prussian official Jakob Philip Manitius bought a seven-year-old boy from Guinea for a hundred reichsthaler from the ship carpenter Martin Harnack. The purchase contract explicitly stated that the child was enslaved and that all proprietary rights were transferred to Manitius. What is more, the contract mentions that Manitius was part of a larger group of “gentlemen” who intended to educate the child in the Christian religion and “useful sciences.” The young “Moor” was eventually sent to the Collegium Fridericianum in Königsberg. A later purchase offer for the same individual by the duchess of Holstein is also preserved, further proving the straightforward and ordinary character of such transactions. In a surprising twist, the young man was soon thereafter abducted by several soldiers who may have been acting on orders by Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp.19

In 1757, the Moravian ship captain Nicholas Garrison bought a young African by the name of Fortune in Suriname, allegedly because “he recognized his pleasant, cheerful, and honest character, which was very different from the character of the other Negroes, and thought he might come to love the Savior; and therefore, he felt a great affection for him.”20 Garrison brought Fortune to Germany and eventually left him with the Moravian congregation in Niesky, where he worked in a bagmaker’s shop. Religious education may also have been considered to increase a slave’s worth, as in the case of a “Surinamese Moor” offered to the landgrave of Hesse by an Amsterdam physician in 1774. The latter assured the landgrave that he had taken pains to teach the “Moor” the “Christian religion” and turn him into a “useful subject.”21

Several “Moors” are known to have married into German families. While in itself an indication that integration into German society was possible both through professional and familial networks, the problems and restrictions encountered by many of these couples show that (former) enslavement could be perceived as a mark of dishonor. Questions of honor also played a role in a violent altercation involving court trumpeter Christian Real in 1669: during a night out in Stuttgart, he was viciously attacked and severely wounded by a group of hunting attendants, who resented his status within the court and military hierarchy. Not only does the persistent labeling of Real as a “Moor” in the extant sources point to an underlying social construction of difference and otherness, but the interrogations and petitions during the criminal case against his attackers reveal that at least some contemporaries essentialized the label “Moor” as dishonoring.22

Given the considerable discrepancies in the living conditions of enslaved individuals in early modern Germany, it comes as no surprise that the forms and levels of coercion they were subject to also varied substantially. Generalization is hardly possible in this regard; like other servants and bondspeople, slaves’ experiences depended on their ability to fulfill assigned functions, on the possibility of building relationships of trust and support across and along hierarchies, and on the character and predispositions of the individuals involved. War captives employed in large-scale, labor-intensive construction certainly faced harsher realities than a trusted valet. Captives belonging to the Bavarian elector after being taken during the conquest of Buda in 1686, for instance, were put to work digging channels for the waterworks at Schleißheim Palace.23

But even in the most splendid surroundings, enslaved individuals could face brutal coercion. Jonathan Belcher reported a particularly grim story related to him during his stay at the Hanover court in Herrenhausen in 1704. One of the elector’s musicians, a young enslaved boy, had run away several times, whereupon the elector himself threatened to have two of his fingers cut off. While violence against servants was certainly common enough during this period, such cruel punishment—even if it remained a mere threat—seems rather extreme.24 It is remarkable that a New England merchant accustomed to the face of colonial slavery felt the urge to record this account. In general, the frequently mentioned attempts to run away serve as reminders of the harsh realities of servants’ lives, whether enslaved or not.

An infamous example of how the mark of alterity could persist despite a brilliant career is that of Angelo Soliman. This former African slave rose to prominence in eighteenth-century Vienna as a well-connected courtier, Freemason, and friend of Emperor Joseph II. And yet, after his death in 1796, his skin was removed, stuffed, and displayed clothed in feathers and pearls. Such gruesome disregard was experienced not only by individuals designated as “Moors,” as the example of painter Feodor Iwanowitsch Kalmyk illustrates. Captured as a child by Cossacks somewhere in the Altai region, he was trafficked to the court of Catharina II of Russia and eventually ended up in the service of Princess Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt in Karlsruhe. There he received artistic training and enjoyed a distinguished career as a painter. He spent years studying in Italy, and in 1800 accompanied Lord Elgin to Athens to document architecture, statues, and reliefs of classical Greece in marvelous drawings. Not only was this internationally esteemed artist still referred to as “a Kalmuck slave” on an English etching as late as 1815, but after encountering Feodor Iwanowitsch in Karlsruhe in the same year, Johann Wolfgang Goethe quipped offhandedly that he should be stuffed and put on display. Such actions and sentiments would hardly have been aimed at individuals considered to be “Christian” or “Europeans,” allowing the conclusion that “Moors”—despite any honors bestowed upon them or esteem they had garnered—were more vulnerable than other members of the society that had supposedly integrated them.25

Exit from Enslavement in the Holy Roman Empire

Given the often obscure character of enslavement in the Holy Roman Empire, it is no surprise that the possibilities of exiting slavery are a complex topic as well. There are only a few known records documenting manumissions in Germany.26 This is somewhat bewildering since formal manumission was well known in the context of serfdom. While some documents may not have survived, it seems safe to assume that there were a considerable number of informal manumissions. Especially in the case of “Court Moors” or valets in wealthy households, exit from enslavement may not have occurred by way of a formal act. Instead, it may have been a matter of changes in perception and treatment. In the absence of obvious markers of enslavement in everyday life, the transition to freedom may have been equally indistinct. Indeed, some “Moors” may never have been regarded as slaves by their masters in the first place. Rudolf August Mohr may be a case in point, as may his temporary fellow “Court Moor” at Wolfenbüttel, the famous Anton Wilhelm Amo. The latter was given to Duke Anton Ulrich as a present in 1708 and listed among the household servants between 1721 and 1725. Independently of each other, both men were offered the option to attend university. While Mohr decided against the academic environment, Amo proceeded to read philosophy and law at Halle. Under these circumstances, it seems highly unlikely that the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel considered these men bound to them by slavery rather than by a patron–client relationship.27

Transitionary rituals—most importantly baptism—may have signified an individual’s exit from slavery in some instances. But while there was a general agreement that non-Christian enemies captured in war could be enslaved, there evidently was no automatism linking baptism to manumission. What is more, contemporary jurists like Christian Thomasius or Ludwig Julius Friedrich Höpfner were quite adamant in their opposition to such notions.28

A further possibility of exiting slavery was abscondence, though there are only a few known cases of fugitive slaves in the Holy Roman Empire. Servants, serfs, soldiers, and others readily used escape as a form of passive resistance, and so did enslaved individuals. At the same time, escaping is an act clearly demonstrating agency. The future “Court Moor” Rudolf August Mohr first came to the attention of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel at the Leipzig Easter fair in 1684, where he had been hiding in a church to avoid being sold to another merchant by his master. Christian Real had been appointed as a page to Duchess Maria Dorothea before becoming the Duke of Württemberg’s trumpeter. For unknown reasons, he ran away while serving in this function and was returned by force. The “black Malabar” Samuel Johannes, who had been “gifted” to Countess Zinzendorf in 1743, absconded from Herrnhut in 1754. The officials of the countess’ patrimonial court undertook considerable efforts to apprehend the “wild slave,” but came up emptyhanded. Samuel Johannes made his way to Berlin, but finding no employment there, he eventually returned to the Moravians after several weeks.29

Slaves and former slaves also occasionally undertook to define their situation and win autonomy by legal means. In 1780, an anonymous man in the service of Royal Prussian Chamberlain Joachim Erdmann von Arnim petitioned Frederick II of Prussia for his freedom. He argued that he had only entered into a limited service contract with Arnim, while the latter claimed to have bought the man as a slave in Copenhagen. The King made his decision dependent on the petitioner’s ability to produce a contract stipulating terms of service, which he could not. The court case of Franz Wilhelm Yonga against his former master, councilor Franz Christian von Borries, was far more convoluted: Spanning the period from 1790 to 1795, it illustrates both the persistence of slavery and the ambiguities characterizing the position of so-called “Moors.” Borries had purchased Yonga as a youth in London in 1763. Twenty-six years later, he sold him to Count Leopold of Lippe, who employed Yonga at his court. Soon thereafter Yonga, who was experiencing financial difficulties, sued Borries at the Lippe High Court for wages due for twenty-two years of service. He based his claim on two different and somewhat contradictory assertions: First, he claimed to have become free upon his baptism in 1767. Later on, he produced an assessment by an English lawyer stating that he had become free upon arriving in Britain according to the verdict in the famous Somerset case of 1772. But the proceedings ended with the judges denying Yonga’s case and essentially affirming the proprietary rights of masters over enslaved persons brought into the Holy Roman Empire. Remarkably enough, in an unrelated petition to Count Leopold in 1794, the same Yonga—now trying to avert his discharge—argued that he belonged to the Count and could therefore not simply be dismissed. He thus refuted or embraced the status of slavery depending on circumstance, tenaciously juggling arguments in attempts to safeguard his own interests.30

Former “Moors” who had lost their positions or fled from their masters were threatened to a considerable degree by destitution. For individuals who had come to Germany from Africa, the West Indies, or the Indian Ocean region—whether free or unfree—using their ability to assume the role of “Moor” may have been the most feasible or even the only option for supporting themselves. Numerous examples of individuals traveling from town to town in eighteenth-century Germany seeking employment as servants can be found. For example, on November 4, 1742, a “Moor from Copenhagen” appeared in the Moravian church settlement of Herrnhaag to offer his services to Count Zinzendorf. He left the next day, apparently to try his luck at the next likely manor. In 1743, an “employment-seeking Moor” received a handout at the court of the counts of Reuß-Plauen in Obergreiz in Thuringia.31

Exiting slavery became more regulated and presumably easier with the introduction of legal measures by German states. Officially, slavery as an institution was ended at different times in various territories. Before the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, only the Allgemeines Landrecht (General State Laws) of Prussia introduced in 1794 proclaimed that slavery was not to be condoned there. Enslaved individuals brought to Prussia by their owners with the intent to settle there were considered released from slavery, although some obligations to their masters could persist. At the same time, the rights of slave owners bringing enslaved individuals into Prussian territory for a limited time only were explicitly protected. Only in 1857 was slavery unambiguously prohibited in Prussia. In the Austrian Empire, the Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (General Civil Code) of 1811 explicitly outlawed slavery.32

Conclusion

The lives and experiences of enslaved people in early modern Germany defy simple generalizations. It is clear that slavery existed in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation at the time: historical case studies as well as jurisprudence provide ample evidence of its persistence and acceptance. At the same time, they confound an understanding of enslavement as something singular and exceptionally drastic. Unlike West Indian plantation economies, where the status of slavery appears as an all-determining factor, its consequences in German society are much more ambiguous, and research has produced fragments of highly distinct and varied biographies. For example, although readily recognized as “Moors,” Rudolf August Mohr or Ignatius Fortuna in their later years were hardly deemed slaves by their contemporaries. Such individuals had considerable status conferred upon them by their noble masters, they undeniably had influence because of their positions, and their wealth and ownership of property confirms them as actively participating members of the society they lived in. At the same time, others were bought, sold, and coerced into obedience by violent measures; captives were forced to perform hard labor, and fugitives were pursued as runaway slaves.

The dependencies and hierarchies imposed on these foreigners in Germany, as well as the roles they filled and the jobs they did, served to obscure slavery. They may even have rendered the enslaved status essentially meaningless in some cases, although one may assume that the affected individuals retained a clear idea of their own enslavement. Nevertheless, it is also obvious that these men, women, and children were set apart in the perception of their German contemporaries, as evidenced by labels like “Moor” or “Black.” They occupied a specific position open to them because of the origins and qualities attributed to them. And it becomes equally apparent that to many, this did not confer privilege or security. The inherent contradictions in these stories may vex historians; to early modern Germans, however, who were used to navigating a richly stratified society and culture, they may have been much less significant. It is perhaps precisely these contradictions and opacity thwarting the piercing gaze of historical enquiry that represent the most significant characteristic of enslavement in the early modern Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Monika Firla, ed., Exotisch, höfisch, bürgerlich: Afrikaner in Württemberg vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhundert. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Hauptstaatsarchivs Stuttgart; [vom 14. März bis 29. Juni 2001] (Stuttgart, 2001); Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich: Handel, Migration, Hof (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2013); Markus Friedrich, “‘Türken’ im Alten Reich: Zur Aufnahme und Konversion von Muslimen im deutschen Sprachraum (16.–18. Jahrhundert),” Historische Zeitschrift 294, no. 2 (2012); Renate Dürr, “Inventing a Lutheran Ritual: Baptisms of Muslims and Africans in Early Modern Germany,” in Protestant Empires: Globalizing the Reformations, ed. Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

  2. 2.

    For debate on enslaved persons in early modern Germany see Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Sarah Lentz, and Josef Köstlbauer, “Beyond Exceptionalism—Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650–1850,” in Beyond Exceptionalism: Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650–1850, ed. Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Josef Köstlbauer, and Sarah Lentz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 5–9.

  3. 3.

    Magnus Ressel, “Eine Rezeptionsskizze der atlantischen Sklaverei im frühneuzeitlichen protestantischen Deutschland,” in Theologie und Sklaverei von der Antike bis in die Frühe Neuzeit, ed. Nicole Priesching and Heike Grieser (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2016).

  4. 4.

    “Sclave, Leibeigener, Knecht,” in Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, ed. Johann Heinrich Zedler, vol. 36 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1743), 643–45; “Nigritien, oder das Land der Schwarzen,” in Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon, ed. Zedler, vol. 24 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1740), 887–91.

  5. 5.

    Sarah Lentz, “Wer helfen kann, der helfe!”: Deutsche SklavereigegnerInnen und die atlantische Abolitionsbewegung 1780–1860 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 123.

  6. 6.

    Manja Quakatz, “‘… denen Sclaven gleich gehalten werden’: Muslimisch-osmanische Kriegsgefangene im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation (1683–1699),” Werkstatt Geschichte 66, no. 67 (2015); Friedrich, “‘Türken’ im Alten Reich”; Stephan Theilig, Türken, Mohren und Tataren: Muslimische (Lebens-)Welten in Brandenburg-Preussen im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin Germany: Frank & Timme, 2013).

  7. 7.

    Mark Häberlein, Aufbruch ins globale Zeitalter: Die Handelswelt der Fugger und Welser (Darmstadt: Theiss, Konrad, 2016), 161; Arne Spohr, “Violence, Social Status, and Blackness in Early Modern Germany: The Case of the Black Trumpeter Christian Real (ca. 1643–after 1674),” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz, 62–65.

  8. 8.

    Peter Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren: Afrikaner in Geschichte und Bewußtsein der Deutschen (Hamburg: Junius, 1993), 64, 104–5.

  9. 9.

    Craig Koslofsky, “Slavery and Skin: The Native Americans Ocktscha Rinscha and Tuski Stannaki in the Holy Roman Empire, 1722–1734,” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz; Mark A. Peterson, “Theopolis Americana: Boston and the Protestant International,” in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 337–38; Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 66–67.

  10. 10.

    Michael Zeuske, Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei: Eine Globalgeschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 1:569–74; Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 66.

  11. 11.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 129, 131; Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 54–55; Firla, Exotisch, höfisch, bürgerlich, 65.

  12. 12.

    Peterson, “Theopolis Americana,” 341.

  13. 13.

    Gerhard Koch, ed., Imhoff Indienfahrer: Ein Reisebericht aus dem 18. Jahrhundert in Briefen und Bildern (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2001), 275–88; Josef Köstlbauer, “‘I Have No Shortage of Moors’: Mission, Representation, and the Elusive Semantics of Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Moravian Sources,” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz, 120–21.

  14. 14.

    Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, “Verschleppte Kinder im Heiligen Römischen Reich,” in Transkulturelle Mehrfachzugehörigkeit als kulturhistorisches Phänomen, ed. Dagmar Freist, Sabine Kyora and Melanie Unseld; Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 123–25; Manja Quakatz, “‘Conversio Turci’: Konvertierte und zwangsgetaufte Osmanen. Religiöse und kulturelle Grenzgänger im Alten Reich (1683–1710),” in Ein Raum im Wandel: Die osmanisch-habsburgische Grenzregion vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Szabolcs Varga and Norbert Spannenberger (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014), 224.

  15. 15.

    See for example “Rechtsgeschichte eines erkauften Mohren,” Beyträge zur juristischen Literatur in den preußischen Staaten, no. 6 (1780): 296–311; Christoph Heinrich Schweser, Theatrum servitutum oder Schauplatz der Dienstbarkeiten (Raspe, 1769), 587–588, 599. See also Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon, ed. Zedler, vol. 15 “Knechte,” and vol. 38, “Soldatengefangennehmung”; on Höpfner and Hugo see Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, “Slavery and the Law in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz; Christian von Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken Von dem Gesellschafftlichen Leben der Menschen Und insonderheit Dem gemeinen Wesen: Zu Beförderung der Glückseeligkeit des menschlichen Geschlechtes (Frankfurt: Renger, 1747), 131–34.

  16. 16.

    Kate Lowe, “The Black Diaspora in Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, with Special Reference to German-Speaking Areas,” in Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250–1914, ed. Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013); Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 53; Köstlbauer, “‘I Have No Shortage of Moors,’” 123–124; Renate Blickle, “Frei von fremder Willkür. Zu den gesellschaftlichen Ursprüngen der frühen Menschenrechte. Das Beispiel Altbayern,” in Leibeigenschaft: Bäuerliche Unfreiheit in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Jan Klussmann (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003), 169–73.

  17. 17.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 112.

  18. 18.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 130, 140; Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith, eds., Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020), 15–17; Ute Küppers-Braun, “Kammermohren: Ignatius Fortuna am Essener Hof und andere farbige Hofdiener,” Das Münster am Hellweg 54 (2001).

  19. 19.

    See Renate Dürr, “Inventing a Lutheran Ritual: Baptisms of Muslims and Africans in Early Modern Germany,” in Protestant Empires: Globalizing the Reformations, ed. Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, “Verhandelte (Un-) Freiheit: Sklaverei, Leibeigenschaft und innereuropäischer Wissenstransfer am Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 43, no. 3 (2017): 358–59. Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 105.

  20. 20.

    Gemeinarchiv Niesky, Lebenslauf Fortune, March 27, 1763.

  21. 21.

    Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 54–55; Uta Sadji, “‘Unverbesserlich ausschweifende’ oder ‘brauchbare’ Subjekte? Mohren als ‘befreite’ Sklaven im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Literarische Imagologie: Formen und Funktionen nationaler Stereotype in der Literatur, ed. János Riesz (Bayreuth: Ellwanger, 1980), 43; Mark Häberlein, “‘Mohren’, ständische Gesellschaft und atlantische Welt: Minderheiten und Kulturkontakte in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Atlantic Understandings: Essays on European and American History in Honor of Hermann Wellenreuther, ed. Claudia Schnurmann and Hartmut Lehmann (Hamburg et al.: Lit, 2006), 97; Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 141.

  22. 22.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 145–51; Spohr, “Violence, Social Status, and Blackness,” 71–73.

  23. 23.

    Friedrich, “‘Türken’ im Alten Reich,” 341.

  24. 24.

    Peterson, “Theopolis Americana,” 337–38.

  25. 25.

    Johannes Werner, Der Kalmück: Das Leben des badischen Hofmalers Feodor Iwanowitsch (Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2016); Oliver Jehle, “Lord Elgin’s Kalmuk: Feodor Ivannoff und die Pluralisierung der Vaterländer,” in Von analogen und digitalen Zugängen zur Kunst: Festschrift für Hubertus Kohle zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. M. Effinger (arthistoricum.net, 2019).

  26. 26.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 134–35, 181–88; Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

  27. 27.

    Menn and Smith, Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations; Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 308–27; Jacob W. Heckenhauer, ed., Adress-Calender, der Hoch-Fürstlichen Braunschweig Lüneburgischen Haupt- und Residentz-Städte Wolffenbüttel und Braunschweig und daselbst befindlichen Fürstlichen Hofes, auch anderer Collegien, Instantien, und Expeditionen auf das Jahr Christi 1721 (Wolfenbüttel: Heckenhauer, 1721).

  28. 28.

    Christian Thomasius/Henning Adolph Koch, De Ratione Status Dissertationem XV. &XVI. De votorum pluralitate de Arbitrio imperatoris […] cum adjuncta Quaestione AnMancipia Turcica per Baptismum manumittantur (Halle, 1693), § III; Friedrich, “‘Türken’ im Alten Reich,” 340.

  29. 29.

    Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 66, 130; Menn and Smith, Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations, 17; Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich, 147–48; Spohr, “Violence, Social Status, and Blackness,” 67; Josef Köstlbauer, “Subjugation by Labelling: Analysing the Semantics of Subservience in a Fugitive Slave Case from Eighteenth Century-Germany,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 34, no. 2 (2023).

  30. 30.

    von Mallinckrodt, “There Are No Slaves in Prussia?”; von Mallinckrodt, “Verhandelte (Un-) Freiheit,” 371–78.

  31. 31.

    Annika Bärwald, “Black Hamburg: People of Asian and African Descent Navigating a Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Job Market,” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz; UA, R.8.33.b.3, Kurzes Diarium der Gemeine des Lammes in der Wetterau, vom Jahr 1742, 1742; Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren, 157.

  32. 32.

    von Mallinckrodt, “Verhandelte (Un-) Freiheit,” 370–71; Walter Sauer, “From Slave Purchases to Child Redemption: A Comparison of Aristocratic and Middle-Class Recruiting Practices for ‘Exotic’ Staff in Habsburg Austria,” in Beyond Exceptionalism, ed. von Mallinckrodt, Köstlbauer, Lentz; Lentz, “Wer helfen kann, der helfe!”, 280–83.