How did medieval Europe understand different ethnicities and races? What categories did they use to discuss notions of difference? Discover how white Europeans came into contact with people from sub-Saharan Africa and how they depicted them in literature, art, and music.
Posing for portraits by Albrecht Dürer, playing music in orchestras, and serving in imperial courts, Black lives in early modern Central Europe were diverse and varied.
Transatlantic slavery, the Enlightenment, and the birth of scientific racism greatly shaped Black experiences in Central Europe.
African Americans traveled through Central Europe in greater numbers in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, a newly unified Germany took on the project of empire in Africa. Examine these different historical phenomena in Central European history.
Jazz, the “Black Horror on the Rhine,” the loss of colonies in Africa, the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust: Black experiences in Central Europe during 1914 and 1945 were rich and dynamic while also more vulnerable to violence than ever before.
Following the demise of the Nazi racial state, Black people in both East and West Germany found different ways to manage their lives.
Explore Black lives and experiences in Germany today.
[…] For websites giving more context for the early ethnic diversity of Europe (related to the Thursday talk and also our ongoing discussion of Malory), check out the amateur tumblr Medieval POC and the collaborative academic website Black Central Europe. […]
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