Dr. Sarah Lentz 

Abstract of the workshop project

The fundamental idea of my suggested workshop is to bring together leading experts on a

participation of people of German origin in the global slaving system to arrive at a more

comprehensible understanding of the extent to which the German-speaking territories were

entangled in the global slaving economy. As specialists for different geographical slaving

economies these historians will shed light on the individual situation in each of the relevant

territories, while the joint expertise of the participants will for the first time enable a

comparison of a German involvement in slavery and the slave trade worldwide. Besides the

focus on the profiteers of the global slavery system themselves, the workshop will explore

societal, discursive and economic entanglements with the German territories. Consequently,

such a systematic inquiry would a) trace biographical patterns of said German profiteers, b)

add to the already established data on enslaved people brought to the German territories, c)

estimate profits gained from an involvement in slavery, d) research the discursive engagement

with slavery. With regard to the personal benefit of the workshop for the applicant it is

conceived to build the starting point for several subsequent research co-operations, such as the

creation of a database bringing together all-known information on said slavery profiteers