Crossing the Atlantic Twice: Black Africans and Americans in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany—Encounters of Color, Race, Identity, and the Exotic

Vera Lind

This paper explores whether during the centuries in which slavery existed in other countries the encounters with black Africans and black Americans developed along different lines in Germany, which possessed no colonies and did not participate in the overseas slave trade, and whether this led to a specifically German perspective on color, race, identity, and the exotic. German soldiers who fought for the British in America from 1776 to 1783 evaluated North American slavery in terms of their understanding of servitude in Germany and condemned the poor treatment of slaves. Nearly two hundred black Americans were recruited into the German forces and employed as musicians, and some of them accompanied their units back to Germany. Most led privileged but dependent lives as exotic symbols in German court and military life. Because Germans usually judged foreign peoples by religion rather than by skin color, baptized black soldiers could be and were integrated into society. The presence of these soldiers also contributed to the enlightened philosophical debate on defining difference within the human species, as naturalists and philosophers tried to substitute scientific methods for theological explanations. With this work the groundwork for future scientific and social distinctions between humans based on race was laid. [WP# 98034]