Angelo Soliman Then and Now: A Historical and Psychoanalytical Interpretation of Soliman Depictions in Modern German Literature

This paper explores the general historical context and one particular theoretical context of modern depictions of Angelo Soliman, a court moor who lived in Vienna from 1755 to 1796. The historical context encompasses what we know of Soliman’s biography, his biographers and their research processes. The theoretical context encompasses Frantz Fanon’s application of psychoanalysis to the black man in his book Black Skin, White Masks (1952). These contexts inform an analysis of two modern theatrical depictions of Soliman: Ludwig Fels’ play Soliman (1991) and Andreas Pflüger and Lukas Holliger’s comic opera Der schwarze Mozart (2005). The changes these two authors make to Soliman’s biography and the ways in which they depict Soliman’s victimization within larger racist discourse are being analyzed. This analysis shows that the same exoticizing impulse that led to the exhibition of Soliman’s remains after his death in 1796 still seems to be present in racial discourse in the German-speaking world today, although in a different form.