August Sabac el Cher

The Afro-German August Sabac el Cher (1836-1885) was buried on September 24, 1882 in Cemetery I of the Trinity Community in Kreuzberg. ^[1] Although his grave no longer exists today, he is a memorable person. August Sabac el Cher was quite successful professionally by the standards of the time and he is one of the few former black valets who have achieved a certain degree of fame today, because after all his name is known, which only applies to a small number of these servants. He has a Wikipedia entry and there are books about him and his family. ^[2] Stories such as that of Sabac el Cher are otherwise often completely forgotten, even if other, often nameless Black servants at court are still visible in the background of paintings in Prussian castles today. ^[3]

Sabac el Cher lived for some time right next to Cemetery I of the Trinity Community in Baruther Straße in Kreuzberg, i.e. almost exactly in the middle between today's Hallesches Tor and Mehringdamm underground stations. Shortly before the end of his life, he had now moved to Bergmannstraße, Sabac el Cher became – at least on paper – an equal Prussian. Why he came to Berlin in the first place is the responsibility of Prince Albrecht of Prussia (1809-1872), who undertook an expedition to Egypt with Karl Richard Lepsius in the middle of the 19th century.

In the research on August Sabac el Cher's life story, it becomes clear that it only seems to begin with his meeting with Prince Albrecht of Prussia. Historical sources only allow assumptions about the first years of his life and his birthplace. It is only with Prince Albrecht that a pictorial or written, albeit incomplete, documentation of Sabac el Cher's life begins, mainly from white perspectives – for example, from the point of view of Prince Albrecht's companions on the journey to Egypt. From Sabac el Cher's own perspective, nothing is learned.

Prince Albrecht's journey came about because he quarreled with his wife Marianne, so that it was decided at court in Berlin that it would be better to withdraw the king's youngest brother from the gossip of the big city for a while. ^[4] So Albrecht set off for Egypt in 1843 with Karl Richard Lepsius. Lepsius had been sent by the Prussian King Frederick William IV for research purposes. Albrecht played a supporting role on the journey and accordingly there is little information about the prince's stay in Egypt – the journey is not mentioned in his biography, The Forgotten Prince. Nevertheless, it is clear that the journey took place at a time when there was great interest in Egypt. Egypt, as a place of early civilisation, exerted a true fascination on Europe. ^[5] The expedition leader Lepsius had already achieved a certain fame as an Egyptologist at a young age, because he had deciphered inscriptions on Egyptian figures and sarcophagi based on Jean-Francois Champollion's work. ^[6] Now he was to carry out further research on site.

Journeys, such as those of Lepsius, Prince Albrecht and the accompanying scientists and artists, can be read in a certain tradition of Orientalism. One of the pioneers of postcolonial studies, Edward Said, traces the keynote for the relationship between Europe and North Africa – which was understood as part of the Orient stretching from the Mediterranean to China – to Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. Over 100 scientists, artists and engineers accompanied Napoleon to explore Egypt. The result, in the form of the collection Description de l'Egypte, laid the foundation for Egyptology and made the "Orient" an object of Western knowledge. ^[7]

Shortly after their arrival in Egypt, Lepsius, Prince Albrecht, and fellow travelers met Mehmed Ali, the ruler of Egypt at the time. The Sabac el Chers family record book states that Mehmed Ali gave Prince Albrecht a Black boy from southern Egypt (present-day Sudan) as a "gift". ^[8] At the time, slave trade was still practiced in Egypt, and in Europe, the exoticizing practice of employing African servants at court was considered fashionable. Therefore, it was not uncommon to receive a human "gift" and accept it without worrying about the humanity and desires of the new servant. In addition, the powerful often gave new names to their new servants or serfs. For example, Sabac el Cher got its name from Prince Albrecht. What he was called before is unknown.

First, Sabac el Cher accompanied the tour group of Lepsius and Prince Albrecht to Giza and then on to Palestine to places from biblical stories, Beirut and Damascus. While Albrecht apparently had no specific task, the general goal of the expedition was to collect art objects and papyri. From a Prussian point of view, Lepsius and the draughtsmen, architects and painters who traveled with him were very successful: "1500 ancient Egyptian originals were brought to Berlin, more than 2000 drawings and paper impressions of monuments were made, and around 15,000 plaster casts of architectural parts and sculptures were made." ^[9] Today, many of the objects can be seen in the Neues Museum in Berlin, and an appropriate way to deal with them from a postcolonial perspective is still up for debate. Finally, via Constantinople, Athens and Vienna, he returned to Berlin in 1843, the city that would be Sabac el Cher's home for the rest of his life. His migration story was certainly not voluntary, because Sabac el Cher was a boy of about 7 years old and was given to Prince Albrecht as a serf. ^[10]

In Berlin, Sabac el Cher first moved into the attic of the Albrecht Palace, "the prince's magnificent domicile at Wilhelmstraße 102 to 104", to other domestic servants. ^[11] He received German and Christian religious instruction and was apparently a good student. There is still a Bible in the Sabac el Chers family possession today, which the boy received from his teacher with a dedication to the "attentive pupil Sabac el chel". ^[12]

At the age of 15, Sabac el Cher became a lackey, as such he had to clean and set tables.

During this activity, Sabac el Cher often had to wear oriental fantasy costumes. The noble lords, according to Pieken and Kruse, determined the accommodation of the black valets, their clothing, their training and their profession. These valets were not allowed to resign or decide for themselves where and how they wanted to live. ^[13]

Black servants at the Prussian court, who had abducted white expedition members from Africa, already existed under the Great Elector (1620-1688). The Great Elector was the founder of the Brandenburg-African Company and involved in the transatlantic slave trade. ^[14] In Prussia, these servants were given the racist designation "Hofmohr". The second part of the word, here in the abbreviation M., so as not to write out the racist content repeatedly, "is the oldest German designation with which whites have constructed black people as different". ^[15]

It is unclear how Sabac el Cher fared in detail. Legally, he was not considered a slave, enslavement was already forbidden in Germany at the time, but he was not really free either. Joachim Zeller's commentary on another valet, Achmed von Prinz Carl, who can be seen in a painting in Glienicke Palace and in another in the New Palace in Potsdam, offers insights into the not really free living situation of the small group of Black people in and around Berlin in the 19th century. Zeller writes in the book Black Berlin that their situation was usually precarious and they had few choices. Their lives were determined by the European aristocrats. In addition, they experienced exoticizing exclusion and racially motivated discrimination. Zeller quotes, among other things, from the German Colonial Newspaper of 1884, which states that "the [...] of Prince Karl was stared at, like an animal from the land of fables". Certainly, the situation had already come to a head in 1884, because interest in colonialism had grown so strongly by that year that Otto von Bismarck invited other European great powers to the so-called Africa Conference in Berlin. But Sabac el Cher's involuntary serfdom confirms that as a Black person he was not entirely perceived as a person by white Berlin society.

In addition to his work as a valet, which he began at the age of 16, Sabac el Cher was baptized in the same year with the name August Albrecht, after Prince Albrecht himself and his godfather August Ferdinand Ströhmer. The historian Stephan Theilig identifies church records and baptismal certificates as important traces in tracing Black German history. ^[16] It was common practice to have employees baptized and to give them German names.

On November 25, 1867, August Sabac el Cher married Anna Maria Jung, a white woman from Berlin. How the two met is uncertain. But thanks to his employment, the lackey in the Albrecht Palace was considered a good match. ^[17] In addition, Anna was already six months pregnant and the marriage was necessary according to the rules of decency of the time. On March 10, 1868, her son Gustav Albrecht was born and on July 20, 1869, their daughter Elise Bertha Charlotte followed.

After the death of Prince Albrecht, his eldest son, who was also named Albrecht, appointed Sabac el Cher as the silver administrator of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais in 1873, because Sabac el Cher was considered very reliable. ^[18] He was now responsible for valuables such as silver, porcelain, centerpieces and glass. ^[19] For these tasks, Sabac el Cher received an annual income of 600 marks, which was considerable for the time. The family had no financial worries. Pieken and Kruse note that the family was finally able to move into their own apartment that year, at today's Baruther Straße 11 in Kreuzberg, which was not too far on foot from the Albrecht-Palais in Wilhelmstraße^[20].

But just a few years later, in 1876, Sabac el Cher had to resign from his job. It is speculated that he fell ill with stomach cancer. During the period of illness, towards the end of his life, in 1882, Sabac el Cher received a naturalization certificate from the Berlin police president. This meant that he and his children were legally considered Prussian citizens and were the same as all other Prussians, at least on paper. ^[21] In 1885, Sabac el Cher died of stomach cancer, according to the church register of the Trinity parish.

Even though this article is primarily intended to commemorate the life of August Sabac el Cher, which is only incomplete and difficult to reconstruct, it is significant how strongly his life was shaped by white, influential men, who were not least responsible for his migration to Berlin-Kreuzberg. These men are still honored in Berlin's cityscape – there is a Lepsiusstraße in Berlin-Steglitz and a Prince Albrecht monument in Charlottenburg's Schloßstraße, whereas not even August Sabac el Cher's grave exists in the cemetery of the Trinity Community in Kreuzberg.

Despite all this, Sabac el Cher obviously achieved a lot of positive things in his life: his comparatively high position and the accompanying financial security allowed him more and more freedom of choice over the course of his life, which is confirmed by the move to his own apartment in Baruthestraße. Obtaining Prussian citizenship can also be considered a success. His son, Gustav Sabac el Cher, also had a successful career as a bandmaster. He can even be seen together with his white wife in a painting entitled "Prussian Love Happiness" in the German Historical Museum. At later times – with the Berlin Conference, the Scramble for Africa, the First World War and, at the latest, with the Nazi regime – more and more obstacles were systematically put in the way of Black people. In the end, for example, citizenship would have been out of the question.