Dressing Angelo Soliman

Heather Morrison

Eighteenth-Century Studies, Volume 44, Number 3, Spring 2011, pp. 361-382

(Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2011.0001

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/423078

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 361

Dressing Angelo Soliman

Heather Morrison

Long after his death in 1796, writers remembered Angelo Soliman as a

generous and noble family man, a humble intellectual, and a black man both proud
of his heritage and able to make light of his dark complexion while residing in a
white European capital. Walking through the streets of Vienna in his long, blind-
ingly white caftan over Western vest and breeches and wearing the white turban
without which he was never seen in public, Soliman projected a combination of
Viennese educated gentleman with North African royal blood and character. Though
he was remembered for this consistent sartorial self-expression, this was not the
only clothing Soliman wore. As a Freemason playing a central role in initiation
ceremonies, he shifted to an all-black ensemble in order to portray a “fearsome”
black man. This character’s appearance was meant to test the courage of any
white European, for this African was violent, impenetrable, and not bound by the
laws of either civil society or physics. Earlier in life, as a courtier to Prince Wenzel
von Liechtenstein, Soliman wore flowing robes embroidered in silver and gold
combined with an ornate Turkish saber, a costume that evoked Ottoman luxury
and military might that was nevertheless subject to the Liechtenstein domain and
Habsburg state. After his death, the imperial natural history collection displayed
Soliman’s body to the public. His skin, stretched over a wooden mold, was dressed
in feathers and cowry shells. His tattooed thighs were on display and he no longer
wore a turban to cover his curly grey hair. This final outfit told the story of an
African whose contribution to humanity was reduced to his utility as an object
of display in the Habsburg imperial and monarchical palace. These four styles of

Heather Morrison is an assistant professor of early modern European History at the State
University of New York at New Paltz. Her research focuses on the intellectual culture of late-
eighteenth century Vienna.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 44, no. 3 (2011) Pp. 361–82.

362 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

dress worn by Soliman across the second half of the eighteenth century reveal dual
ends: an imaginative representation that asserted status within a hybrid society;
and a political representation of the subject, reductive of class and ethnicity, serv-
ing prince and state.
Recent decades have seen extensive interest in the place and construction of
others in European history. Many scholars, stimulated by Edward Said’s Orientalism,
define European understanding of race or difference by analyzing art and literature.
Their arguments diverge over whether the eighteenth century can be identified as
the source of the nineteenth’s racial sciences and racism, or if its intellectual history
shows nebulous and conflicting explanations of human difference rooted in climate
or comparative economic and moral advancement.1 Another interpretive direction,
influenced by the same theoretical trends, emerged in works studying individuals—
mostly freed slaves—living, working, and writing in Europe. Rather than focusing
on white understandings of blacks, these scholars sought to explain how black
Africans negotiated a culture that exoticized them.2 Often modeled on national or
sexual identity scholarship, this approach is limited mostly to those Africans liv-
ing in Europe who wrote about their own lives. Homi Bhabha’s theories and their
application by scholars of the eighteenth century bring together the two academic
approaches to studying Africans and identity in Europe. This scholarship’s empha-
sis on complexity in the study of racial identity is useful here, as Soliman’s African
identity was multilayered, continually created through acts and texts—including his
clothing. The evolution of this man’s identity as displayed through dress within the
culture of Habsburg Vienna reflects both his and the city’s cultural hybridity.3
Soliman’s location allowed him to assert through dress both difference
and status. Through the use of so-called oriental symbols, he crafted a nuanced
portrait of an African identity, one deserving pride and respect. Furthermore, Vien-
nese culture, with its heterodox dress and peoples, provided him with the room to
do so. Soliman and his sartorial inventions thus support Peter Mason’s argument
that “exoticist representation is indifferent to ethnographic or geographic precision
and tends to serve imaginative rather than concretely political ends.”4 The playful
merging of Eastern, African, and central European cultures and styles in clothing
asserted racial, national, and ethnic individuality and equality. The consumption
of luxuries displayed by Soliman’s body also asserted his civility as a black man
because, as Roxann Wheeler argues, his contemporaries looked to relative economic
advancement more than complexion as an indication of savagery or civility.5 But
when Soliman was dressed for and by the state and its representatives, even though
his costumes were equally imagined and geographically indeterminate, the ends
served were concretely political. These costumes expressed menacing political power,
a range of social inequalities, and even an official assertion of the inhumanity of
some races. I argue that Soliman’s dress in these situations supports the conten-
tion that, rather than conviction in the developing science of race, political and
economic motivations led to pseudo-scientific claims of fundamental inequality.6
Analysis of the four distinct habiliments described in the opening of this essay al-
lows an exploration of the tensions and distinctions between a black man’s inde-
pendent self-expression and the appropriations of his skin and his identity by men
in power. Both allow a glimpse of the peculiarities of identity and race formation
in the eighteenth century.
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 363

Through these four types of costume—Soliman’s ceremonial, daily, and

Freemasonic dress, and the feather headdress and skirt his body was placed in
after death—we can understand how the multiethnic Habsburg state viewed this
educated African and how he presented himself to the world. These public sartorial
statements are the focus of this essay, yet they were but one way his story was told.
Historians, playwrights, and contemporaries—even Soliman himself—found his life,
his race, and his role in the social and political worlds of late eighteenth-century
Vienna objects of fascination and decoration.7 His personal narrative includes mili-
tary glory, love and marriage in the face of societal hurdles, financial adventures, a
romanticized heritage, Freemasonry, and the incredible tragedy of his fate.
Enslaved as a boy in the 1730s and transported around the Mediterranean
and central Europe, Angelo Soliman was educated, picked up several European
languages, and served in wars with his third owner. According to tradition, Soliman
saved the Habsburg magnate from death on the battlefield and was offered a com-
pany of his own to lead, which he humbly declined. He was probably emancipated
with that heroic act or upon that prince’s death in 1755. He accepted a position
with Wenzel von Liechtenstein, despite reportedly more prestigious offers, and
moved to Vienna. There he headed the prince’s household and became the interces-
sor for anyone requesting favors, an office his biographers interpreted as a sign of
his kindness and humanity. When secretly marrying a Dutch woman in his forties,
Soliman swore that he was a free man. He also gambled and won a large amount
of money, which allowed him to set up a household of his own and speculate in
mining shares, property prohibited to slaves or serfs. He only left Liechtenstein’s
household when the prince found out his underling had married, a state denied most
servants. After being ejected from the house, his position, and, as his biographers
claim, the prince’s generous will, Soliman lived independently in Vienna and even-
tually became a tutor and pensioner of a later von Liechtenstein heir. He was not
the most social of Viennese intellectuals, partially because of financial constraints,
but joined a Masonic lodge that became a center of Enlightenment during Joseph
II’s tolerant early years of sole rule. Mozart also visited the lodge, and some argue
that the composer modeled Monostatos in The Magic Flute on Soliman.
More than his connection to Mozart, Angelo Soliman gained notoriety
from his death. Dying from a stroke in his seventies, he received a Catholic funeral,
but his body disappeared before interment. The cemetery watchman’s wife’s tale
of seeing a dead black man holding two torches jump over the wall at midnight
proved to be fanciful; in truth, Habsburg officials diverted the corpse and stuffed
his skin for the imperial natural history collection. Protests from both his daughter
and the Catholic Church were futile; Soliman’s body was displayed to the public
in a glass cabinet in a room containing an American swamp scene peppered with
stuffed birds and giant rodents. Two other “Vertreter des Menschengeschlechts”
[representatives of the human race], either black or of mixed race, joined him,
preserved and positioned for the public’s edification until a new director ended
the display and placed the three bodies (plus a fourth black man who was stuffed
and dressed in feathers but never exhibited) in an attic for storage. During the
Revolution of 1848, a cannonball fired by the military into the city to quell revolts
hit the roof and started a fire that immolated Angelo Soliman a half century after
his death.8
364 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

This much we know. As Soliman did not leave us his writings, reconstruct-
ing the identity he adopted for himself and his attitudes toward Africa and Europe
is difficult. Histories of his life differ on basic elements of his biography, such as
where he was born, when he was freed, and the social status and level of respect he
achieved in Vienna. This confusion results from the few and questionable sources
concerning his life. We do have, however, a great deal of text and imagery detailing
the clothing Soliman wore, which reveals how both he and others sought to visually
display his identity and guide the public in its reception of his ethnicity.
Clothing was an important part of the visual culture of Vienna in the eigh-
teenth century, attesting to the diversity of its inhabitants. Catholic clergy, some
Jews, and Orthodox Christian groups wore dress differentiating them from other
religions. Various groups under Habsburg rule prominently displayed their often
colorful and complex regional dress, or Tracht, in the capital. A 1788 travelogue
described the visual impact of these styles, explaining that the women of Upper
Austria were the prettiest in the imperial lands because of the advantages of their
clothing, while in the archbishopric of Salzburg the local dress made peasant women
look fat and the middle class unfortunate.9 But other styles visible in Vienna drew
admiration and awe, most notably the Magyar magnates’ Eastern looks. The inter-
national nobility in this capital of the monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire was
the most cosmopolitan in all Europe, and its members wore regional or fashion-
able styles to political purpose.10 Clothing was so important in signifying ethnic,
religious, and social background that changes caused general consternation, such
as new practices of dressing servants richly—and thus, presumably, above their
station—which led to petitions for sumptuary laws. But elite desire to use livery
to display wealth and sustain political and social status, despite the great expense,
ensured that this practice would endure. Dress also divided a household’s servants
into a hierarchy.11 True to these customs, Angelo Soliman’s uniform revealed both
the personal wealth of Prince Liechtenstein and his own position at court. Evok-
ing Soliman, one contemporary described the quest after the extraordinary among
Vienna’s high nobility, who dressed black servants “nach ostindischem Kostume”
[after an East Indian fashion].12
Through his appearance at two international events, Soliman displayed
the power and extent of Liechtenstein’s domain and, through him, the Habsburg
monarchy. In 1760, Soliman traveled with Liechtenstein to escort the Duke of
Parma’s daughter Isabella, the intended bride of imperial heir Joseph II. The prince’s
household ensured a magnificent display for this state event. Account books detail
the care in assembling Angelo Soliman’s several outfits for the occasion. Yards of
gold and silver cloth came to 120 florins, the same amount Soliman would later pay
in yearly rent. A Turkish saber was crafted for him. Liechtenstein spent hundreds
of florins on “reichen Zeugen” [rich material], gold and silver sashes, and “zwey
reiche rothsammettene Hauben zum Bund vor dem hochfürstl. Cammerdiener
Angelo Soliman zu dessen Galakleidern nacher Parma” [two rich red velvet head-
dresses to knot (turbans) for the royal valet Angelo Soliman to go with his Gala
clothes for Parma].13 Viennese artisans thus compiled oriental-looking outfits both
to distinguish Soliman from the servants of European heritage and impress viewers
with their sheer decadence.
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 365

Thus wearing intricately decorated robes of flowing silver and gold, red
velvet turbans, and a saber, the African occupied a preeminent place in a magnificent
procession. A grand painting recorded the visual impact of the entourage’s ritual
entry into Parma. Five ornamented carriages and many dozens of horses and people
displayed Liechtenstein’s prestige in accordance with the diplomatic importance of
the occasion. Soliman and the other mounted figures at the front of the procession
wore clothing leagues above the standardized livery of the servants on foot [see
Figure 1]. His ankle-length golden trousers, sleeveless robe in deep blue and silver
velvet, and billowing white shirtsleeves distinguished him even from the stockings
and breeches–adorned elite guard. A white turban topped by a plume signifying
royalty provided contrast. His white horse even had distinct gilded Turkish-style
caparison, trappings, and harness to distinguish it from the surrounding darkly
colored mounts.14 The contrasts of a black man with royal blue, white, and gold
clothing on a white horse set Soliman apart in a procession whose every member
was meant to impress the viewer. In a painting of the triumphal return through the
city gates of Vienna with the bride, Soliman wore loose red and orange clothing
underneath his ankle-length, sleeveless blue overcoat and a turban that was red
on top and white around the base. A long sword hung from his side.15 Five weeks
of celebrations after Liechtenstein and Isabella’s grand entry in Vienna followed
eleven days of processions, fireworks, and papal dispensations in Parma. Soliman
thus had ample opportunity to display his commissioned clothes.
Soliman was similarly put on display for another gala occasion, the crown-
ing of Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor. A contemporary described the ceremonial
entry into Frankfurt, following a series of lesser servants, of “der erste Fürstliche
Cammer-Diener ein Mohr in einer hell blauen sammeten mit Silber ausnehmend
reichgestickten Mohren Kleidung” [the first royal valet, a Moor in a light blue
velvet Moorish dress exceptionally richly embroidered with silver].16 Bills for shoes,
boots, embroidery, and fur lining and the commission for the garment, described
as “ein ganzes Kleyd” [a full gown or garment], attested to its costliness.17 All the
depictions of Soliman’s combination of loose and flowing clothing and turban, plus
the richly decorated fabrics, distinguished him through material, style, and color
contrast and evoked imagined far-away cultures. Beyond the outward marking of
Soliman’s luster, the expenditure on his livery increased his compensation beyond
what his fellow servants earned even as it bound him to the court.18
Soliman was not alone in being distinguished through livery; the armed
escorts of the prince’s court were also visually unique. Romanticized as an elite
and ancient group, descended from a clan of Hungarian warriors, these men wore
richly festooned jackets and trousers in the Hungarian style.19 Their clothing was
blue, matching the color of Soliman’s robe and of Liechtenstein’s most ornate
carriages.20 In a sea of red livery, the painted blue figures pop out of the frame
for the viewer just as they did for the actual witnesses. Through the wealth and
wide-ranging historical and geographic representations portrayed by his retinue on
carefully choreographed state occasions, Liechtenstein, a military hero who ruled
personally over extensive lands, displayed his independent multinational power
while representing the Habsburg political conglomeration.
The saber, the only decorative item commissioned for Soliman that had
a specific reference to origin, illustrates the symbolism behind his ceremonial ap-
366 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

Figure 1. Unknown Artist, Der Einzug des Fürsten Joseph Wenzel von Liechtenstein in Parma am 3.
September 1760, oil, 1761. Sammlungen des Fürsten von und zu Liechtenstein, Vaduz–Wien.

pearances. Vienna’s cultural memory of the atrocities of sieges and the decadence
of the Ottoman encampments remained strong throughout the early modern era,
as the city enjoyed a culture heavily influenced by the imitation of Eastern customs,
decorated with imagery of the Turks, and inundated with books, broadsheets, and
songs on their military history.21 An advertisement from the 1780s jokingly refers
to “an old Sultana’s dress” as being out of fashion because of the Viennese tradi-
tion of keeping the Ottomans out of the city.22 Turkish dress on parade held clear
associations there; Soliman’s name reinforced its meaning as it directly evoked
the “magnificent” sultan known for the historic defeats and brutal slaughters he
inflicted on Habsburg lands and the opulent culture of his regime and court. Re-
membered though no longer a threat, the sultan still inspired awe.23 Though Vien-
nese constructions, Soliman’s costumes evoked an oriental other possessing wealth,
strength, and stunning artisanry, but who now served the kingdom that kept the
Ottoman Turks from overrunning Europe. The monarchy and its representatives
happily incorporated such symbolic reminders into its rituals for international
diplomatic occasions.
But Soliman’s dress went beyond identifying his role and rank within the
Liechtenstein court and displaying the extent of Habsburg dominion. Ann Rosa-
lind Jones and Peter Stallybrass assert that investiture itself made an individual’s
character and identity.24 Like written references to his princely heritage, Soliman’s
regal dress inscribed on him distant nobility and culture through its luxury, crafts-
manship, and style. Rather than being associated with the stereotype of Africans
as half-naked heathens without government or morality,25 he represented an exotic
civilization, even if subordinated to a European prince. The origin of his costume
was indeterminate yet vaguely oriental, described variously as East Indian, Moor-
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 367

ish, or Turkish.26 By evoking far-away civilizations and a pomp and luxury that
European viewers could identify through their richness, the costumes and the ap-
pearance of this African glorified Soliman’s invented heritage.
The public use of a half portrait commissioned by the Liechtenstein court
illustrates the reciprocity between public display and private advantage in Soliman’s
position as a black valet [Figure 2]. By sitting for the portrait, he lent his image
to the decoration of the court, but it was also reproduced and sold to the public.
The print’s caption read: “Angelo Soliman aus dem königlichen Geschlecht der
Numider, ein Mann von schöner Gesichtsbildung, grossem Verstand, an Gestalt
und Gesicht dem Jugurtha ähnlich; in Afrika, Sizilien, Frankreich, England, Fran-
ken, Österreich allen teuer, ein Hausgenosse von Fürsten” [Angelo Soliman of the
royal dynasty of the Numidians, a man of handsome looks, great understanding,
similar to Jugurtha in figure and face; dear to all in Africa, Sicily, France, England,
Franconia, and Austria, a household companion of princes].27 The image displayed
him in a robe with fur trim, holding an ornate staff decorated with a carved lion.
The portrait set Soliman’s body and rich accoutrements not in Vienna, but in
Egypt, with pyramids, palm trees, and camels. This instructive setting associated
Soliman with the popular knowledge of Africa, while the inscription asserted his
ease of movement across lands and his comfort in all cultures. In its representation
of qualities achieved independent of the prince he adorned, Soliman’s portrait re-
flected the cosmopolitan ideal even as it hinted at its failures, for those travels and
relationships resulted from enslavement.28 Though his cosmopolitanism challenged
traditional order, Liechtenstein’s reasons for popularizing Soliman’s image were the
same as when he undertook preeminent state ceremonial duties at great expense.29
Angelo Soliman, as the head valet for that court, was a public figure who served
as a representation of state power and baroque nobility.30
But to view Soliman exclusively as a canvas for the display of a prince’s
political power, completely without agency of his own, would be to belittle a man
who negotiated well a life in central Europe and to ignore the vagaries of status
there. Soliman had no choice but to wear a uniform in the Liechtenstein court.
The ceremonial dress described here therefore symbolizes his personal subjection
and the global abuses of the slave system. Yet, as Ruth Holliday argues, such a
uniform can be “a mask (experienced either positively or negatively) or a marker
of . . . identity.”31 It allows assertion of authority—when inferiors might otherwise
question a minority’s identity—and expression of character and individualism
through its details. The choices Soliman made in crafting his own uniform expressed
the identity he wished to convey; he embraced his individualism in the face of
overwhelming homogeneity by emphasizing a distinct heritage, high culture, and
strength through Eastern dress. In Soliman’s case, Eastern-style dress subsumed
his identity as a black African, in effect denying his real heritage, but also allowed
him a position of respect and leadership in a powerful prince’s court.
While he was Liechtenstein’s first valet, Soliman enjoyed the top social
rank below the landed aristocracy. In this finely graded society of orders, Angelo
Soliman outranked nobility without land and judges in Prague or Bratislava. Even
within this top tier he ranked high, as “Je höher der Herr, desto höher das Ansehen
seiner Diener” [The higher the Nobleman, the higher the standing of his servant].32
His prominence in the display of Liechtenstein’s status therefore elevated Soliman’s
368 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

Figure 2. Johann Gottfried Haid, Angelo Soliman, mezzotint, c. 1750, after an oil
painting by Johann Nepomuk Steiner.Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv,
Porträtsammlung, Vienna.

own position in society.33 The account books from the Parma expedition indicate
that Soliman himself arranged his costuming, recording payment to the “Hungar-
ian lace maker” “nach vorherigen Contract denen Pagen, Angelo” [in accordance
with previous contract with the page, Angelo]. He also signed for the saber.34 In
the ritual processions, Soliman displayed his horsemanship while surrounded by
other elite bodyguards and courtiers, thus evoking his history of military service
independent of Liechtenstein. In these public appearances, then, the complexity of
Habsburg social ordering allowed Soliman to serve his own interests even as the
Liechtensteins and Habsburgs used him and his clothing for political ends.
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 369

Soliman’s removal from the prince’s court because of his illicit marriage
entailed a retreat to a more private and less ornate life. He moved in with his wife,
and for the next three decades lived a rather quiet existence, but still retained
recognition from his days of publicity. His friendships with intellectual elites—
mostly courtiers of low noble or bourgeois rank—and the honorific “Herr” used
in his legal documents indicate that his social status had not fallen much.35 Of
prerevolution fashion, Roland Barthes contends that “To change clothes was to
change both one’s being and one’s social class, since they were part and parcel
of the same thing.”36 And Soliman did display his life and status change through
what he wore. In his daily dress, he adopted a simpler, less decadent style than the
ceremonial wear described earlier, but did continue to sport clothing which the
Viennese identified as oriental. Caroline Pichler, who remembered Soliman from
her youth, wrote that his normal dress was of his native land, in the “turkish style,”
and often brilliant white in dramatic contrast with his dark skin. Another writer
contrasted his appearance in flowing, blindingly white robes with that of a white
abbot wearing black. The Hungarian writer Ferenc Kazinczy described Soliman
attired in a “weißen, gestreiften Gewand” [white, striped robe], presumably the
“melierte Kaftan” [mottled caftan] listed in the inventory of his clothing at death.
He also had one white caftan and a valuable silver one.37
Not all of Soliman’s clothes were Eastern in appearance, however, and he
often mixed different styles. Conceding to European dress, he owned vests for each
of his caftans, as well as breeches, stockings, shirts, and neckerchiefs. He took liber-
ties with these articles to further signify that he truly belonged to neither culture.
The vests were not of a style current in the city, and in a miniature of him, as well as
in the portrait mentioned above, he wore his neckerchiefs simply wrapped around
his neck without the elaborate ties of his contemporaries.38 Silhouettes made of
Soliman during the 1780s show, however, that he varied this practice, sporting dis-
tinctive fasteners or a lace necktie in the current style [see Figure 3].39 His overcoats
and old furs seem to have complemented the caftans in their color and simplified
oriental style.40 These clothes were unique for the capital, but understated, and thus
rejected his former role as an ornament at court. Condition of clothing, according
to Barthes, is itself a statement, and Soliman’s was well-kept but worn.41 His style
rejected ornament in favor of dignity, and opulence for humility. Maintaining the
brightness of his caftans was indicative of pride in his unique dress and distinction
from the laboring classes. Like his sometime walking companion Joseph II, who
favored an unvarying military uniform over fancy court styles, Soliman carefully
chose his clothes to make a political point and convey values and identity.
In keeping with his quasi-Eastern look, he always wore a turban. Kazinczy
reported his extreme emotion when surprising Soliman shaving; in addition to
being moved by the contrast of black skin and white suds, he informed readers
that “Sein grau werdendes Haar war wie grauer Moskau-Schafspelz” [His graying
hair was like the gray pelt of a Muscovite sheep].42 The style of turban he wore
in private life was more humble than what he had worn to state ceremonies. The
images left of him portray a simple, low white one wrapped around his head three
times. In Vienna, flinging off a turban had been a symbolic gesture of the renuncia-
tion of the Muslim faith.43 Yet, despite his probable early exposure to Islam and
his membership in a Freemason lodge that incorporated Deism, Soliman and his
370 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

Figure 3. François Gonord, Angelo Soliman, silhouette, 1781. Österreichische

Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv, Porträtsammlung, Vienna.

contemporaries did not view his turban as a sign of heretical belief. The archbishop
himself performed and kept secret his marriage, indicating a personal connection as
well as acceptance of Soliman’s faith. The consistory praised Soliman after his death.
Even his name was chosen at baptism, indicating that the sultan’s name served as
no marker of Muslim faith.44 Rather than raising fears of Islam, Soliman crafted
a new meaning for the turban. The Viennese came to label this style of headwear
as African, as when a rhyming tradesman peddled a white turban and, playing on
color, declaimed, “Dieß ist der neueste, ein schwarzer Korsikaner,/ Und dieß der
seltenste, ein weißer Afrikaner” [This is the newest, a black Corsican/ and this the
rarest, a white African].45 Soliman’s customary white head covering thus became
representative of an entire continent, while its rarity and visual impact continued
to be subject to remark. At death, he possessed two turbans along with a sealskin
head covering.46
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 371

A composite of European and other styles, Soliman’s fashion choices were

different from anything else worn in Vienna. But because of the variety of costume
on hand in the city and the importance of having tailored dress reflect heritage and
rank, there were resources available for creating this hybrid wardrobe. Vienna’s
tailors had models in styling Soliman’s clothes. The long overcoats of the Hungarian
nobility were also oriental in appearance. This Tracht, developed in the sixteenth
century, was noted for its similarities to Turkish clothing, and even, occasionally,
Turkish provenance.47 Oriental-type products were easy to come by; in a descrip-
tion of Vienna and its economy in the 1780s, the most numerous type of shop,
outnumbering even wool and linen sellers, sold “Orientalischen Waaren.”48 Though
Vienna had a long history of exposure to Eastern, particularly Turkish, goods, there
was little familiarity with things African. After all, the great Habsburg scientific
expedition under Joseph II spent most of its time in Philadelphia and South Caro-
lina.49 Soliman thus had a great deal of latitude in the construction of his so-called
native dress. Late eighteenth-century Vienna was not as heterodox as modern cit-
ies, but there were various groups perceived as alien or incomprehensible to the
majority German speakers. Contemporary theory asserts that such cosmopolitan
interactions created a dynamic urban experience that could lead to indifference to
“strange” peoples and more cultural permissiveness.50 Furthermore, minorities in
a cosmopolitan setting could exercise “cultural creativity” in their explorations of
place and belonging.51 Vienna’s cosmopolitanism thus inspired and allowed Soli-
man’s actions regarding his dress.
Like many other proud ethnicities in Vienna, Soliman dressed to display his
heritage. The Magyar nobility impressed the public and distinguished themselves
from the impoverished and therefore suspicious lower classes of their territories by
wearing a costume that emphasized their aristocracy, wealth, and military culture.
Similarly, Soliman’s appearance elevated him within the range of attitudes popularly
held about foreigners and black men. Soliman’s portrait compared him to an ancient
Numidian king, and he adopted the name of another ancient North African ruler as
his Freemasonic moniker.52 Like those historical appropriations, Soliman, through
dress, sought to evoke an African heritage of civility and tradition, not an Africa
without governance or culture. Christian tradition provided another model; art
often represented Balthasar as African (including a painting purchased by the Liech-
tenstein court in Soliman’s lifetime), and eighteenth-century Europeans understood
other non-Eastern ethnic groups in relation to the noble, generous, and wise Magi.
Print depictions of Native Americans visiting the Queen of England depicted them
with stock images of the three kings—star, stable, and all.53 Soliman’s residence
in the heavily Catholic Habsburg monarchy and its wealth of baroque imagery
ensured that his resemblance to Balthasar would resonate. Soliman’s biographers
emphasized his Christianity, royalty, wisdom, and generosity as exercised through
a variety of his official and private functions. By dressing the wise king, he became
one. His clothing, chosen to represent dignity and civility, reveals a desire for equal
respect in Viennese society and an attempt to embrace a remembered heritage. By
choosing not to assimilate to European dress and instead displaying his own ver-
sion of Tracht, Soliman in his bright and flowing robes represented an other in a
way that asserted his full participation in that sartorially diverse city.
372 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

As did the everyday fashion Soliman sported once independent of the

Liechtenstein court, the costumes he wore for Freemasonic rituals both acknowl-
edged his difference and asserted his equality. When the Freemason lodge Zur
Wahren Eintracht [True Harmony] held the vote considering Soliman’s membership,
minutes recorded the unanimous decision “ihn wegen seinen nicht zu glücklichen
Umständen unentgeltlich zu incorporiren, auch weil er in einer vielleicht unächten
Loge aufgenommen wurde, zu rectificiren” [to incorporate him without payment
because of his not too happy circumstances and to rectify his incorporation into
a perhaps false lodge]. Soliman’s incorporation indicates his full participation in
Habsburg society. By waiving fees, the lodge also waived the condition that nor-
mally enabled Freemasonry’s socioeconomic exclusivity.54
Initiated in 1781, Soliman took an oath swearing his complete independence
of mind and body. This was important to members, as later the lodge excused itself
from voting on a journeyman sculptor, arguing that it was questionable whether or
not he was free.55 A fellow lodge brother, in a veiled reference to the presence of an
African in this otherwise all-white lodge, wrote that members “sieht hier Menschen
an einander gereihet, die sonst sein Auge durch eine unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit
von Verhältnissen auf ungeheure Strecken von einander entfernt sah, und die Trotz
der unübersehbaren Kluft, welche das Schicksal zwischen ihnen aufgerissen hat,
sich hier bieder die Hände drücken, sich unter Umarmungen und küssen Brüder
nennen” [see here men gathered together, who otherwise would have only been
seen from afar because of the colossal distances brought through an interminable
variety of social conditions, and who, despite the undeniable cleft that fate tore
between them, here forthrightly press one another’s hands, and while embracing
and kissing call each other brother].56 Soliman was initiated and rose through
the degrees in an institution that practiced and preached the doctrine of equality,
demanding its display through embraces and ritual celebrations. But Soliman and
his lodge embraced his difference for ritual purposes through ceremonial clothing
and performance. Clothing held meaning in Masonry: the apron evolved from the
useful pouch of the originating guild to a purely representative object festooned
with symbols, while mourning coats were important in Master’s-rank rituals.57
Soliman’s Freemasonic costumes therefore imparted both values and identity.
In 1782, the lodge created the office of “Fürchterliche Brüder” [fearsome
brother], derived from French Freemasonry.58 Whereas every other brother taking
office ran in a contested election, Angelo Soliman was the only nominee for this
position and received unanimous support.59 The creation of this post seems to be a
direct acknowledgment and even a celebration of Soliman’s black-skinned African
heritage. Unlike the members nominated to mentor someone through initiation, the
performative role created for Soliman was integral to the moral testing of “seek-
ers.” The initiate typically went through hazing, encircled by brothers rattling their
aprons, sprinkling water on him, and pointing daggers or swords at his chest.60
But Soliman and his brothers added a period of staged exclusion. The “fearsome
brother” greeted postulants in a dark room, dressed entirely in black robes or
swathing evocative of allegorical death. There were swords involved, and perhaps
the lodge rolled out its “fire machine” as well.61 The darkness of the room, glimpses
of human remains and a coffin, along with strategic torch placement created the
impression of a spectral guard not bound by human or natural laws. Soliman’s
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 373

dark skin contributed to the effects. On the other side of a heavy door, the lodge
members discussed the seeker’s fate. After forceful and patterned knocking between
Soliman and the brothers inside, the door opened “with vehemence” and Soliman
gravely told the gathered brothers that he had with him a man who asked to be
received as a Freemason. They then slammed the door shut, and the seeker was
left alone with the African once again. Once the door reopened, Soliman escorted
the initiate in to symbolize his admittance into the order.62
Through election to this office, Soliman and his brothers acknowledged the
potential fear that his physical appearance inspired. In a poem celebrating lodge
leaders, Freemason Alois Blumauer wrote of Soliman:

Auch unser fürchterliche Bruder ist

In seinem Amt ein wahren Exorzist;
Er macht an unsers Tempels Schwelle
Dem Suchenden oft heiß die Hölle,
Und bannt, wenn ihms sein Meister heist,
Im finstern manchen starken Geist.

Our fearsome Brother also is

In his office a true Exorcist
He makes at the threshold of our temple
the seekers feel the heat of hell,
And banishes, when his Master demands it,
In the darkness many a strong spirit.63

The ritual dress exaggerated his blackness in order to test seekers’ morals and
fortitude in their quest to join the lodge. By replacing the armed crowd of broth-
ers with a single black brother and setting him in a dark room with fire, swaths of
black fabric, and imagery of death, the lodge and Soliman created a figure that was
frighteningly unknown. But this was an orchestrated ruse whose aim was to uphold
the moral elitism of the lodge, and it thus reasserted his status and equality among
the Masons. If he survived this theater, the new Mason heard a speech congratulat-
ing him on his resolve in surmounting difficulties. The speaker proclaimed that he
“nous convainquent, que vous avés meprise les prejugés injustes de l’ignorance”
[convinced us that you scorned the unjust prejudices of ignorance].64 As access to
this important social sphere depended upon a man’s response to the appearance
of an African who was going to great lengths to intimidate him, the ceremony
displayed the status Soliman had achieved in late eighteenth-century Vienna, even
while his dress emphasized his difference and played upon exaggerated fears of
African brutality.
In the lodge, Soliman explored the ways he could assert his unique ethnic
identity with pride while still garnering the benefits of belonging to his adopted
Viennese culture. Soliman’s name again elucidates how he presented both an
exceptional and an equal self within the lodge. Regardless of status, ethnicity, or
religion, the Freemasons signed their real last names in the minutes. Soliman signed
sometimes with his first name instead, acknowledging both names as inventions of
his youth dissimilar to the family names of his brothers. Wearing black swathing in
rituals and invented combinations of European, Eastern, and North African dress
in regular lodge meetings, playing as fast and loose with his name as he did with
his clothing, Soliman explored and created his own category even while embracing
374 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

belonging. Within an association whose primary purpose was to bestow inclusion

on its members, Soliman took the opportunity to playfully explore his identity
precisely because he was secure as a brother in this protected space. Pressure from
peers could certainly influence or limit the way in which he did so, but it seems
this group idealized tolerance and learning from other cultures.
In addition to adopting Enlightenment attitudes, Masons were asked to
produce works on the lodge’s behalf. Members thus composed music and lyrics to
honor Freemasonry or its leaders. The group also bought an organ and paid ser-
vants for performances.65 Years after its dissolution by the state, one of the lodge’s
more famous visitors finished his opera on Freemasonic and Enlightenment themes;
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s participation in this rational and active association
influenced The Magic Flute. The references within the opera, plot line, and themes
can be connected to Freemasonic concerns and the lodge’s intellectual discourse.66
Furthermore, the brothers influenced character development; the central figure of
Sarastro has been tied to chairman Ignaz von Born, to whom Mozart dedicated
an earlier cantata.
Monostatos, the black antagonist in the opera, has confused scholars, how-
ever. While most writers who knew Soliman, or were closely connected to people
who did, viewed him as kind, honest, and generous, the black man in Mozart and
Emanuel Schikaneder’s opera is intimidating, sneaky, and dangerous. Whereas
Soliman had a quiet family life, base desires motivate the character in the opera.
With this character discrepancy, specialists question whether Soliman actually was
the model for Monostatos. Malcolm S. Cole recently wrote that Mozart’s musical
representation of Monostatos “crafted a well-rounded portrait of a person, not
a bizarre stereotype.” He argues that Monostatos is sympathetic as an outsider
negotiating an intolerant society that unduly restricts him. Cole, however, sees
Schikaneder’s representation of him in the libretto as crude and racist.67 I suggest
that, considering Soliman’s willingly played role in lodge ceremonial, the certainty
that Mozart interacted with him, Schikaneder also being a contemporary in Vienna’s
small intellectual culture, and the linguistic similarities between the character’s name
and Soliman’s adopted one, the character of Monostatos as a fearsome figure in this
opera (which itself is an ode to Masonry) is an homage, though a questionable one,
to Soliman. As in Blumauer’s poem, Mozart’s opera delights in the stereotyped role
played by Soliman. The lodge’s Enlightenment-leaning intellectuals critiqued the
superstitions of the Counter-Reformation Church, yet gleefully embraced exorcism
and hell-fire in lodge performance because it was satirical. In the lodge, as in Prince
Liechtenstein’s court, Soliman was an intercessor for the needy, collecting alms for
impoverished families.68 This good man played the part of the fearsome brother
precisely because he enjoyed the sociability of the lodge as a fraternal equal.
Monostatos has a little-known afterlife in the sequel to The Magic Flute
penned by the librettist, who found a less enduring composer to contribute the
score. In The Labyrinth, or War with the Elements, Monostatos appears disguised
as a bird. The opera ends with the large “black bird” imprisoned in an Aviary, and
Papagenas and Papagenos surround him singing, “See what a dangerous bird we
bring/ He would eat people, [he] is malicious and impudent/ O, clap him quickly
in iron wings.”69 The simple crowd gawked and gloried in the dangerous black
man made harmless by his shackles and cage. The opera premiered the year after
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 375

Soliman’s death, by which time his body had been stuffed and put on display in a
feathered outfit to confirm the ignorant masses in their attitudes toward Africans.
The audience at Emanuel Schikaneder’s sequel, viewing Monostatos’s dehuman-
izing end—attired in feathers and trapped on display in a birdcage—would have
immediately connected the character to the public drama surrounding Soliman’s
demise.
After death, Soliman’s body wore an outfit meant to display uncivilized
Africa, in direct contrast to the dress that in life he had constructed as “African.”
Unlike his former composite of East and West, this costume did not fit into the
culture of the streets and courts of Vienna. A mid-nineteenth-century historian of
the court’s natural history cabinet reported:

Angelo Soliman war in stehender Stellung mit zurückgerücktem rechtem

Fuße und vorgestreckter linker Hand dargestellt, mit einem Federgürtel
um die Lenden und einer Federkrone auf dem Haupt, die beide aus roth-
en, weißen und blauen, abwechselnd an einander gereihten Straußfedern
zusammengesetzt waren. Arme und Beine waren mit einer Schnur weißer
Glasperlen geziert und eine breite aus gelblichweißen Munz-Porzellansch-
necken (Cypraea Moneta) zierlich geflochtene Halskette hing tief bis an
die Brust herab.

Angelo Soliman was in a standing position, situated with his right foot
stretched back and left hand reaching forward, with a feather belt around
his hips and a feather crown on the head, both of which were made of al-
ternating rows of red, white, and blue ostrich feathers. His arms and legs
were adorned with strings of white glass beads and a broad, decoratively
woven necklace of gold-white money cowry shells dangled low on his
chest.70

The feather skirt and headdress sought to shock viewers with the difference
of this other land and its inhabitants. The decorations, made almost entirely of
natural products, hinted at a culture whose people lived in and products came from
nature. The display of skin, particularly Soliman’s tattooed legs, evoked the extent
of difference between African and European cultures.71 Yet, as Felicity Nussbaum
argues, such images revealing a conceptual “slippage between beast and human”
were not meant to signify geographic place, and show that racial science had not
yet cohered.72 Angelo Soliman’s placement in a room with flora and fauna from the
Americas, and the feather belt and headdress that replicated conceits in European
paintings, illustrate the misguided and haphazard racial education Europeans re-
ceived from early modern anthropology and natural history museums.73 Kazinczy’s
emotional chance viewing of Soliman’s hair led him, despite his friendly inclina-
tions toward the man, to compare him to a sheep. In public view at the imperial
collection, viewers who had no experience of Soliman’s humanity were taught that
he was one step removed from the animals.
But the imperial cause, not biology, was on display in Soliman’s little green
cabinet. Dominik Collet argues that imperial collections were purely representa-
tive and allegorical, as the practice of collecting without system or documentation
prevented any scientific use.74 The mixture of exanimate Africans set in an artificial
American ecology in the imperial natural history collection certainly provided no
educational value. The other bodies to join Soliman on display similarly reflected
376 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

the nature of the monarchy rather than an interest in developing a new science of
man. The Queen of Naples sent one six-year-old stuffed girl as a present to the
court—a purely diplomatic exchange. In 1801 the Kaiser ordered stuffed another
man, Pietro Michaele Angiola, who in life had cared for the imperial animal collec-
tion.75 The Kaiser’s authority extended over this employee’s afterlife as well; he had
the mixed-race free man with a southern European name placed in a water-logged
South American scene riding a camel. These were the king’s personal Africans,
locked in a glass cabinet so the public could view representations of imperial power.
By creating this spectacle and housing it in the palace, Franz II and the director of
the collection presented a scene staged to assert that hierarchy and monarchy were
objective and just means of negotiating human difference.76
The court natural history collection of which Soliman would become a
notorious part was assembled, cataloged, and run by his friends and fellow Free-
masons. The director and contributors to the display of bodies were knowledgeable
in natural history and were central players in court power. Though there was a sign
labeling Soliman, the little girl, and Angiola as “representatives of the human race,”
the people running the imperial collection knew Soliman, knew about American
botany, read travel accounts of the abuses and irrationalities of American slavery,
and were not using the display to present a scientific racial argument or even basic
geographic literacy.77 Attempted accuracy in Soliman’s dress in death, as in life, was
wholly undesirable. The intent Soliman’s display served was the court’s, not that
of science. The anti-Jacobin investigation and prosecution of former Freemasons
ensured that none would be likely to protest the king’s prerogative. In one extant
letter to Kazinczy, Soliman lamented the turn toward arbitrary conservatism under
Franz II. Kazinczy himself was to be arrested for political reasons, but not before
he burned two other letters Soliman wrote in French, presumably because he felt
they implicated him as a radical.78 A Francophile and a liberal, Soliman’s cultural
and political views were of precisely the type despised by Franz II. Even if he was
not hanged as a Jacobin, he was still stuffed, and the king thus put his authority
on public display.
For Angelo Soliman and his friends, former masters and rulers, his African
heritage and medium-complexioned black skin provided a canvas for the creation of
an exaggerated other. Through dress, this otherness was accentuated and decorated,
at certain times to imply civility—even royalty; at others, a power that hinted at
physicality and potential violence. Someone acknowledged as a mild-mannered
intellectual and family man, when dressed up, could become a symbol of the su-
pernatural, of Africa’s savagery, or of the power of an empire. The context of the
capital of the multinational empire is important in gauging these identity creations.
Soliman’s case study, predating racial science, illuminates the effects of multina-
tionalism on culture. It seems that his ethnic identity was less proscribed because
of the abundance of difference; but the structure of this imperial system governing
absolutely over a society divided through rank and ethnicity, while providing the
basis for unity, allowed for the offenses of his display for the state. In what was
perhaps Joseph II’s more enlightened absolutism of the 1780s, the emperor exerted
his authority over his subjects’ bodies and self-representation, demanding changes
in burial customs, speech, and serfdom. Thus the more conservative Franz II could
assume the same extent of power when appropriating a body for his scientific
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 377

cabinet. He created a curiosity that both displayed his patronage of intellectual

culture and implied his geographic power.
Sources indicate that Soliman fully recognized the connection between
costume and identity. Late in life, he walked through the Graben in Vienna with
Kazinczy, who was decked out in the full Tracht of the Hungarian elite. His friend
later reported that Soliman noticed all the attention they were getting, turned to
him, and said, “Sieh mal, denken sie nicht, daß du auch aus Afrika kommst?” [Look
now—don’t they think that you come from Africa too?].79 This anecdote shows
that Soliman not only realized the function of costume in displaying heritage, he
viewed the popular imagination of African dress as being uninformed and gullible.
Soliman could dress all in white, he could wear Turkish military gear, or nothing but
shells and feathers, and because all were different from typical European fashion,
Europeans would see them as African in the context of his skin. The only dress
in which Soliman’s choices were entirely independent was his vaguely Turkish or
North African everyday dress. But even when evoking fear, death, and the exorcism
of evil as a Freemason, or empire as a servant of Prince von Liechtenstein, Soliman
was complicit in the choice of costume. Through his dress, Soliman molded how
the public comprehended his identity as an African. He sought to differentiate
himself from popular conceptions of the ignorant African slave by wearing fashions
that fed into contemporary European fascination with the East, identified him as a
noble, historic warrior, and displayed him as a man of leisure. His dress portrayed
a free-thinking, self-aware man partaking fully in Vienna’s culture—until his death,
when the state requisitioned his body and dressed and displayed him to convey
the exact opposite.

NOTES
I would like to thank Katherine French, Katherine Foster, James Kennaway, Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace,
Suzanne Marchand, Karl Vocelka, Janek Wasserman, and anonymous readers for Eighteenth-Century
Studies for their comments on versions of this essay. Research was supported by a Richard Plaschka
Stipendium from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Research and Science and a leave from the State
University of New York at New Paltz.

1. In the first category, historians and theorists trace nineteenth-century pseudo-scientific attempts to
define a finite group of human races, whose differing abilities are tied to measurable physical differences,
back to the eighteenth century. See Sander Gilman, “The Image of Slavery in Two Eighteenth-Century
German Dramas,” Germanic Review 45 (1970): 2–40. Even the literature which argues that eighteenth-
century ideas cannot be reduced to the status of building blocks for later racialization theories disagrees
over the nature of those ideas. Some authors focus on the climate-based theories that explained com-
plexion as a temporary result of proximity to the sun; see Hannah Franziska Augstein, introduction to
Race: The Origins of an Idea, 1760–1850 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), xviii. Roxann Wheeler, in
The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia:
Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, 182–190), argues that the British emphasis on the four-stage theory
tying human development to relative economic and social advancement worked against racialization
in the eighteenth century.

2. The literature concerning Olaudah Equiano is the most extensive: see Vincent Carreto, Equiano
the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2005); and George E.
Boulukos, “Olaudah Equiano and the Eighteenth-Century Debate on Africa,” Eighteenth-Century
Studies 40, no. 2 (2007): 241–55, on identity issues.

3. See Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 56, 83. On effects of
cultural hybridity and identity under the Habsburg monarchy, particularly for the modern period, see
Éva Kovács, “Die Ambivalenz der Assimilation. Postmoderne oder hybride Identitäten des ungarischen
378 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

Judentums,” in Habsburg Postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, ed. Johannes

Fiechtinger, Ursula Prutsch, and Moritz Csáky (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2003), 197–208.

4. Peter Mason, Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,
1998), 3.

5. Wheeler, Complexion of Race, 191.

6. Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1945), 10, argues
that racism developed to defend the economic institution of slavery from abolitionists.

7. An opera in progress on Soliman by Carl Hancock Rux, performed at Bard College in 2008,
tells Soliman’s story through a frame narrative set in the late Weimar era. For other popular works
based on Soliman’s life, see Monika Firla, “Angelo Soliman in der Wiener Gesellschaft vom 18. bis
20. Jahrhundert,” Aufklärung—Vormärz—Revolution. Jahrbuch der “Internationalen Forchungsstelle
Demokratische Bewegungen in Mitteleuropa von 1770–1850” 18/19 (1998/99): 82–83.

8. Austrian novelist Caroline Pichler recorded Angelo Soliman’s story after his death at the request
of the Abbé Grégoire; See Grégoire, De la Littérature des Nègres (Paris, 1808), 130–46; and Pichler,
“Der Neger Angelo Soliman,” Morgenblatt für Gebildete Stände 2, no. 210–11 (1 and 2 September,
1808): 837–38, 842–43. Later historians or biographers have added archival research, starting with
Gustav Brabée, “Ein schwarzes Mitglied der Loge ‘Zur Wahren Eintracht,’” in Sub Rosa: Vertrauliche
Mittheilungen aus dem Maurerischen Leben unserer Großväter (Vienna: L. Rosner, 1879); and then the
more thorough W. A. Bauer, Angelo Soliman, der hochfürstliche Mohr. Ein exotische Kapitel Alt Wien
(Vienna: Gerlach and Wiedling, 1922). In the last ten years, Monika Firla has significantly added to
Bauer’s source base; see Firla, “Angelo Soliman,” 69–95; “Segen, Segen, Segen auf Dich, guter Mann!”
Angelo Soliman und seine Freunde Graf Franz Moritz von Lacy, Ignaz von Born, Johann Anton Mertens
und Ferenc Kazinczy (Vienna: Tanzhotel/Art*Act Kunstverein, 2003); and Angelo Soliman—Ein Wiener
Afrikaner im 18. Jahrhundert. In Das Rollettmuseum Baden und die Gall’sche Schädelsammlung 48
(Baden: R. Mauer, 2004). Walter Sauer’s “Angelo Soliman: Mythos und Wirklichkeit,” in Von Soliman
zu Omofuma. Afrikanische Diaspora in Österreich 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert. ed. W. Sauer (Innsbruck:
Studienverlag, 2007) 59–96, is the best introduction to the various archival discoveries and reconstruc-
tions of Soliman’s life. Though these historians have uncovered the sources I use here (except for the
Freemasonic material), there has been no sustained focus on his sartorial fashions.

9. Hrn. B. F. Hermann, “Bemerkungen auf einer Reise durch Oesterreich, Salzburg, Bayern und
Schwaben im Jahre 1781,” Physikalische Arbeiten der einträchtige Freunde in Wien 2, no. 3 (1788):
94–96, 148.

10. James van Horn Melton, “The Nobility in the Bohemian and Austrian Lands, 1620–1780,” in
The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol. 2, Northern, Central, and
Eastern Europe, ed. H. M. Scott (New York: Longman, 1992), 110–43.

11. Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner, “Livreen adeliger Häuser,” in Des Kaisers teure Kleider. Festroben
und Ornate, Hofuniformen und Livreen vom frühen 18. Jahrhundert bis 1918, ed. Georg Kugler and
Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner (Vienna: Kunsthistorische Museum, 2000), 229.

12. [Johann Pezzl], Skizze von Wien (Vienna: Kraussischen Buchhandlung, 1788), 5: 707–8.

13. The accounts are reproduced in Bauer, Angelo Soliman, 27. See also Sauer, “Angelo Soliman”
(77, 90) on Soliman’s rent and the embroiderer’s bill.

14. Der Einzug des Fürsten Joseph Wenzel von Liechtenstein in Parma am 3. September 1760,
oil, 1761, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna. See a similar caparison and harness sent to Catherine the
Great by Sultan Abdul Hamid I in 1775 in “Showcase 53, 54. Turkish ceremonial horse harness of
the XVIIIth century,” Kremlin Museums, Moscow, accessed 30 March 2009, http://www.kreml.ru/en/
main/museums/armoury/hall08/showcase53/.

15. Martin van Meytens, Arrival of Isabella of Parma on the occasion of her wedding to Joseph II,
oil, 1760, Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna. On associated ceremonies, see Janet K. Page, “Music and the
Royal Procession in Maria Theresia’s Vienna,” Early Music 27, no. 1 (1999): 109. The accuracy of
the painting, particularly Soliman’s placement and resultant status, is questionable; see Sauer, “Angelo
Soliman,” 69. Indeed, for artistic purposes Meytens broke with a variety of court protocols about
precedence; see Herbert Haupt, “Diplomatie und Repräsentation im Dienst des Kaiserhauses. Die
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 379

Öffentlichen Einzüge des Fürsten Joseph Wenzel von Liechtenstein,” in Joseph Wenzel von Liechten-
stein. Fürst und Diplomat im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Reinhold Baumstark (Einsiedeln: Sam-
mlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, 1990), 36, n. 65. Despite the painting’s obvious deficiencies in
representation, its depiction of clothing supports the accumulation of material on Soliman’s costuming
and corroborates the turban, overcoat, and sword.

16. Franz Erwin Serger, qtd. in Firla, “Angelo Soliman in der Wiener Gesellschaft,” 72.

17. Bauer reproduces these Liechtenstein financial records in Angelo Soliman, 30.

18. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 17–19, emphasize the importance of livery as nonmonetary
compensation.

19. Haupt, “Diplomatie und Repräsentation im Dienst des Kaiserhauses,” 35–36.

20. As a rule, most of the Liechtenstein household wore red to ensure identification, though light
blue was also sparingly used to set apart both certain individuals and ornate carriages. See Kurzel-
Runtscheiner, “Livreen adeliger Häuser”; and Haupt, “Diplomatie und Repräsentation im Dienst des
Kaiserhauses,” 32.

21. Paula Sutter Fichtner, Terror and Toleration: The Habsburg Empire Confronts Islam, 1526–1850
(London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 51–53, 60–63.

22. Der durch verschiedene Länder reisende Modenkrämmer, so auf dem Wienermarkt hier angekom-
men (Vienna: Joseph Gerold, n.d.), n.p.

23. Fichtner, Terror and Toleration, 73–75.

24. Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, argue that this was no longer true in the eighteenth
century when oriental wear became a superficial fashion, but I believe that in Soliman’s case the theory
applies.

25. See William Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530–1880,
2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003). The Habsburg monarchy, with few encounters with
Africans as a result of geography and their dearth of colonial interests, received many of their ideas
through the French publications Cohen analyzes. For intellectual constructions of ethnicity in the
German Enlightenment, see Birgit Tautz, Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Sander Gilman, “The Figure of the Black in the Thought
of Hegel and Nietzsche,” The German Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1980): 141–58.

26. Identification of ethnicity and race was typically vague in the Habsburg lands; the terms “Greek,”
“Turkish,” and “black” could label eastern or southern Europeans. See Maximilian Grothaus, “Zum
Türkenbild in der Habsburger Monarchie,” and Snezka Panova, “Zum Handel der Länder südosteur-
opas mit dem übrigen Europa im 17. und 18. Jahrhunder,” in Das Osmanisch Reich und Europa 1683
bis 1789: Konflikt, Entspannung und Austausch, ed. Gernot Heiss and Grete Klingenstein (Vienna:
Verlag fur Geschichte und Politik, 1983), 75 and 200–201, and the categorization of the Viennese
population in Pezzl, Skizze von Wien. Michael E. Yonan adds that the terms indianisch, japanisch,
and chinesisch were interchangeable in “Veneers of Authority: Chinese Lacquers in Maria Theresa’s
Vienna,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 4 (2004): 657.

27. Translated from the Latin of the print in Baumstark, Joseph Wenzel von Liechtenstein, 146.

28. On cosmopolitanism’s ideals and failures, see Margaret C. Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the
World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania
Press, 2006).

29. Haupt reports the Parma trip cost 219,725 gulden and earned Maria Theresa’s gratitude
(37–38).

30. Firla traces his advancement from third Kammerdiener to first, at the top of the court’s service
hierarchy, in the prince’s records (Angelo Soliman, 11–12).

31. Ruth Holliday, “The Comfort of Identity,” in Fashion Theory: A Reader, ed. Malcolm Barnard
(London: Routledge, 2007), 318–32.
380 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

32. Ernst Bruckmüller, Sozial-Geschichte Österreichs, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001),
190–91.

33. Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 5.

34. Sauer, “Angelo Soliman,” 68.

35. Ibid., 87; Sauer points out that the documents produced at Soliman’s death referred to him as
“Herr.”

36. Roland Barthes, The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 65.

37. Pichler, “Der Neger Angelo Soliman,” 843; Franz Gräffer, qtd. in Bauer, Angelo Soliman, 78;
Kaczinczy, qtd. in Firla, “Segen, Segen, Segen,” 34; “Inventorium und Schätzung,” Verlassenschaften
Fasz. 2/2829-1796, Angelo Soliman, Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna. The silver caftan had twice the
value of the others.

38. Bauer reproduces the miniature in his Angelo Soliman, 28. Then in the possession of the
Feuchtersleben family, Soliman’s descendents, Sauer claims that the portrait is no longer extant.

39. Victor Klarwill, François Gonords Silhouetten aus dem Jahre 1781. Unbekannte Bildnisse aus
alter Zeit (Vienna: Rikola Verlag, 1922), 175; Adolf Deutsch, Sammlung von Wiener Schattenrissen
aus dem Jahre 1784 (Vienna: Verlag “Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung,” 1928), Silhouette 52, n.p. Two
images, Signatur PORT_00014768_01, and Signatur LW 74606-C, are also held in the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv, Porträtsammlung.

40. “Inventorium und Schätzung,” 1796. From the inventory’s limited description, the furs seem to
have been at most a wrap or a cape.

41. Barthes, The Language of Fashion, 27.

42. Qtd. in Firla, “Segen, Segen, Segen,” 42.

43. Fichtner, Terror and Toleration, 69.

44. Pichler wrote that he selected “Angelo” after a female fellow slave, but gave no history of the
choice of “Soliman.” Later he was known for his fascination with history; his public portrait and
Freemasonic name both evoked ancient kings.

45. Der durch verschiedene Länder reisende Modenkrämmer, n.p.

46. “Inventorium und Schätzung,” 1796.

47. Katalin Földi-Dózsa, “Die ungarische Nationaltracht als Hofkleidung,” in Kaiser und König.
Eine Historische Reise: Österreich und Ungarn 1526–1918, ed. István Fazekas and Gábor Ujváry
(Vienna: Collegium Hungaricum, 2001), 23. Certain tailors in Vienna specialized in the creation of
custom Magyar clothing. On the potential for political subversion in this Tracht, see Paul Bernard,
From the Enlightenment to the Police State: The Public Life of Johann Anton Pergen (Champaign:
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1991), 151–52.

48. [Ignaz De Luca], Beschreibung der kaiserlichen königlichen Residenzstadt Wien. Ein Versuch
(Vienna: Joseph Edlen von Kurzbeck, 1785), 1: 58, 1: 98. On the predominance of Greeks and the
Turkish, Jewish, and Armenian populations active in trade in the city, see Erich Zöllner, “Zur Geschichte
des Klischees von Wien und den Wienern,” in Schmelztiegel Wien—Einst und Jetzt. Zur Geschichte
und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten, ed. Michael John and Albert Lichtbau (Vienna:
Böhlau, 1990), 33, 76.

49. Christa Riedl-Dorn, “Mönche—Gesandte-—Gärtner, oder: Österreichs erste naturwissenschaftli-

che Reisende in aller Welt,” in “Die Entdecking der Welt, Die Welt der Entdeckungen”: Österreichische
Forscher, Sammler, Abenteurer, ed. Wilfrid Seipel (Vienna: Kunsthistorische Museum, 2001), 20–21.
See also the travelogues by Joseph Märter in Physikalische Arbeiten der einträchtigen Freunde in Wien
1, no. 3 (Vienna: 1783): 53–66, 82–87.

50. Richard Sennet, “Cosmopolitanism and the Social Experience of Cities,” in Conceiving Cos-
mopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice, ed. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2002), 42–47.
 Morrison / Dressing Angelo Soliman 381

51. See Homi Bhabha, “The Vernacular Cosmopolitan,” in Voices of the Crossing: The Impact
of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa, ed. Ferdinand Dennis and Naseem Khan
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000), 133–42; and Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity:
Community, Culture and Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990),
222–37.

52. Firla, Angelo Soliman, 14.

53. Eric Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British
Empire,” The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 3 (1996): 491, 518.

54. Protokoll 18, in Die Protokolle der Wiener Freimauererloge “Zur wahren Eintracht” (1781–
1785), ed. Hans-Josef Irmen (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994), 47. Regarding the use of dues to restrict
membership, see Roger Chartier, Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane
(Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1991), 164–65.

55. Protokoll 86, in Irmen, Die Protokolle, 85.

56. Augustin Schittlersberg, “Ueber die Beobachtung der maurerischen Gleichheit ausser den (Lo-
gen),” Journal für Freymaurer 2, no. 1 (1785): 77–78.

57. Carton 74, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vertrauliche Akten (hereafter HHStA, VA), holds
aprons from Soliman’s lodge; see Hans-Josef Irmen, Mozart’s Masonry and the Magic Flute, trans. Ruth
Ohn and Chantal Spence (Prisca: Essen, 1996), 110. The lodge’s ritual clothing came at great expense,
requiring a Hungarian magnate’s generous donation. See Protokoll 111, in Irmen, Die Protokolle,
98.

58. Internationales Freimauerer Lexikon, s.v. “Fürchterlicher Bruder,” 5th ed. (Munich: Herbig,
2006), 318.

59. Protokoll 53, in Irmen, Die Protokolle, 66.

60. Jay Macpherson, “The Magic Flute and Freemasonry,” University of Toronto Quarterly 76, no.
4 (2007): 1077–80.

61. An annotated drawing of the doors, candles, coffin, skull, and crossbones used in the lodge’s
initiation or advancement rituals is held in folio 3-5, Carton 60, HHStA, VA. See Irmen on the fire
machine endowed to the lodge at founding (Mozart’s Masonry, 29).

62. The scripts for the ritual are held in folio 136, Carton 65/1, HHStA, VA.

63. [Alois Blumauer], “Gesundheit auf die Brüder Aufseher und Beamte. Am Johannisfeste 5784,”
Journal für Freymaurer 3, no. 2 (1786): 179. The word “Meister” in the poem refers to the Meister
von Stuhl, or chairman of the lodge, Ignaz von Born.

64. Speech held in folio 143, Carton 65/1, HHStA, VA. The ritual was recorded in French, as it
derived from French practices. Soliman also preferred French to German.

65. Protokoll 118, in Irmen, Die Protokolle, 102.

66. Peter Branscombe, W. A. Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991),
8–24, traces literary influences on the opera by lodge brothers.

67. Malcolm S. Cole, “Monostatos and His ‘Sister’: Racial Stereotype in The Zauberflöte and Its
Sequel,” The Opera Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2005): 11.

68. Protokoll 85, in Irmen, Die Protokolle, 84.

69. Cole, “Monostatos,” 2. He dismisses Schikaneder’s libretto as crude racism. Its use of contem-
porary literary tropes about black men is indeed disturbing and racist; nevertheless, I think the work
is a public critique of the treatment of Soliman’s body.

70. Leop. Jos. Fitzinger, “Geschichte des kais. kön. Hof-Naturalien-Cabinetes zu Wien, II. Abtheilung:
Periode unter Franz II bis zu ende des Jahres 1815,” Sitzungsberichte des Kaiserlichen Akademie der
Wissenschaften. Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Classe 57, no. 1 (1868): 1018.
382 Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 44, No. 3

71. Pichler described his thighs as having a “kind of writing” on them (837). Evoking the trauma of
dislocation and enslavement, and his persistent identification with his ethnic and familial background,
she reported he sustained the hope of one day being found and recognized through them.

72. Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human. Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the
Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), 140.

73. See the feather skirts in Johann Bergl’s frescoes in the garden pavilion at Melk monastery
(1763–64). Furthermore, celebratory headwear was not worn in regions whence scholars think Soliman
came. Most point to origins in North Africa, as he reported white settlers, and his family practiced
a mixture of Islam and animism. Bauer claims he owned a signet ring with a quote from the Koran
inscribed on it, though he mentions no source and no one else has uncovered it.

74. Dominik Collett, Die Welt in der Stube. Begegnungen mit Außereuropa in Kunstkammern der
Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 349.

75. Fitzinger, “Geschichte des kais. kön. Hof-Naturalien-Cabinetes,” 1024–28. On Angiola, see
Walter Sauer and Andrea Wiesböck, “Sklaven, Freie, Fremde: Wiener ‘Mohren’ des 17. und 18. Jahr-
hunderts,” in Sauer, Von Soliman zu Omofuma, 34.

76. Sauer, “Angelo Soliman,” 79–87.

77. Lodge rolls in folio 15, Carton 66, HHStA, VA list brothers affiliated with the imperial collection.
On Eberle and Stütz’s connection with Freemasonry, see Firla, Angelo Soliman—Ein Wiener Afrikaner,
18.

78. Firla, Angelo Soliman—Ein Wiener Afrikaner, 16, and “Segen, Segen, Segen,” 40.

79. Sauer, “Angelo Soliman,” 78. Translated and quoted from Ferenc Kazinczy, Versek, müfordítások,
széppróza, tanulmánok, ed. Mária Szauder (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könykiadó, 1979), 281.