John Blanke's Legacy: Unveiling the Long History of the Black Presence in England and Germany

John Blanke’s story tells us something profoundly mundane: Black people lived in Britain a very long time ago. This is profound chiefly because of conventional narratives that presume otherwise, but in most ways this is a mundane fact.  Some few Black residents, like John Blanke, were fortunate to be successful, close to seats of power and influence, and this is why we can have some insight into his existence. In this way, John Blanke’s story connects Britain to the continent, as his counterparts can be found in the German-speaking lands too.

There is a longer history dating back at least to the Black advisors, guards, and servants who populated the Hohenstaufen court in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Scholars like Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov and Rashid-S. Pegah have found and catalogued many Black servants in Renaissance and early modern courts, many of whom occupied musical roles not dissimilar to John Blanke’s. Even at a minor court like the one at Bayreuth we can find a timpanist and actor named Christian Ferdinand, who made a good living there from the 1660s and had four children with his wife Susanna Clara. Like John Blanke, he shows up in a couple of illustrations of processions, but he was not alone. He worked with and may well have been trained by another Black timpanist named Eberhard Christoph, who was married to a widow named Maria Jakobina and had one daughter.

We should resist the temptation to romanticize everything about their life courses. Christian Ferdinand, at least, found his way to the courts via networks of enslavement, and others in similar positions protested against what they considered unfair treatment. But we should include what we know of their presence, their roles, their opportunities, and their frustrations as a constituent part of our common history. 

Jeff Bowersox
Associate Professor University College  London, Faculty of Arts & Humanities​