ABSTRACT
In 1778, the popular German playwright F.G. Nesselrode published his Zamor und Zoraide, a drama adaptation of the French Ziméo-tale, which is in turn an adaptation of Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko. The story revolves around a fictional Black resistance fighter, who takes up arms against his slaveholders in Jamaica. Given the countless translations and adaptations in various European languages, the Ziméo-material proves to be an extremely popular narrative with highly critical political potential. What is special about the Ziméo-character is that he is an eloquent speaker who, in Zamor und Zoraide, legitimates resistance against slavery by invoking natural law and thereby revealing the atrocities of slavery not only to be inhumane but first and foremost violations of human's natural rights. The comparison with canonical German dramas of that time shows that in Nesselrode's play, Ziméo's speeches are conceived as a form of political “truth-telling” which reflects on the interdependency of freedom of speech and self-determined conduct of life. These, in Enlightenment philosophy, are both considered fundamental to a modern state and modern nation-building, but disregarded in colonial law. Nesselrode's drama thus disintegrates Enlightenment narratives of progress, as well as its teleologies, and demonstrates an awareness for and a critique of the racialized structures of the transatlantic world of the Enlightenment.
