Ferdinand Christian Coridon

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Coridon house, built in 1780

Ferdinand Christian Coridon (* 1736 in Berbice ; † August 31, 1819 in Meinerzhagen ) was abducted to Holland as a child of African slaves and later made an amazing career as a fruit writer and building manager at the count's court in the royal seat of Berleburg .

Live and act

Coridon was born around 1736 in what was then the Dutch colony of Berbice as the son of African slaves and was taken away from his parents as a toddler. A common practice at the time of the colonial rulers, who engaged in brisk trade with mostly young people who were brought to the manorial courts in Europe, often when they were still children. When they arrived there, trained as helpers, servants and lackeys, often wearing splendid clothes, they, as so-called Chamber Moors , embodied a piece of exoticism in the Old Kingdom through their nature and skin color . The method of abducting especially young members of indigenous peoples should be particularly pointed out in this context, as their (re) education was usually more successful and so an adaptation to the new living conditions was more likely to succeed.

Coridon was brought to Holland with Caspar, a black boy from Surinam about a year older than him . No reliable data is available on the place and duration of the Dutch stay. In 1752, the two boys came together with a delivery of tobacco as a gift from the late Prince of Orange to the ruling Count Ludwig Ferdinand zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (1712–1773) in the royal seat of the northern county of Wittgenstein.

On the orders of the count, the two boys were trained for five years and brought up as a Christian. After a five-hour test in 1757, which they passed with flying colors, Caspar and Coridon were accepted into the Christian community of the town and baptized. Count Ludwig Ferdinand and his wife Friederike Christiane (1721–1772) made themselves available as godparents. Caspar was given the first name Ludwig Friedrich, while Coridon was baptized Ferdinand Christian; the previous names of the boys later mutated into their surnames. With the admission into the Christian community of Berleburg the lack of freedom of the two indigenous peoples ended at the latest.

The older boy was employed as a count's messenger and died in Berleburg in 1771 at the age of 34.

Ferdinand Christian Coridon also entered the service of his sovereign after his upbringing and baptism in Berleburg, where he took on security and administrative tasks. He was initially the body hussar of Count Ferdinand and took up a position of trust there early on. Later, with a comparatively good income, he became a count's fruit clerk and administrator. In 1780 Coridon built a semi-detached house in the immediate vicinity of the castle together with his brother-in-law , the count's mouth cook Christian Müsse (1747–1788).

A relatively good job at the count's court, the marriage of a local, starting a family and building a house are clear indications that Ferdinand Christian Coridon had made a good move in Berleburg. As a visible sign of successful integration, Coridon and his wife were accepted into the citizenry of the city of Berleburg in 1783.

family

Ferdinand Christian Coridon married the widow Johanna Maria Magdalena Löwer born on July 8, 1774 in Berleburg. Kersting (1737-1796). The children Charlotte Christiana (* 1776 † USA), Christian Friedrich Henrich (1779–1790) and Maria Elisabeth (1781–1814) emerged from the marriage. The ruling Count Christian Heinrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (1753–1800) and his wife Charlotte Friederike (1759–1831) became godparents of the first-born daughter .

After the death of his son and his wife and the emigration of his eldest daughter to North America, Coridon moved to his son-in-law Friedrich Frahne in Meinerzhagen, where he died in 1819 at the age of around 83. In his former house, which was entered in the list of monuments of the city of Bad Berleburg in 2019, there is now a café.

literature

  • Horst Conrad, sovereignty and self-government. The constitution and administration of the city of Berleburg up to the First World War, in: Bad Berleburg - Die Stadtgeschichte, Rikarde Riedesel, Johannes Burkhardt, Ulf Lückel on behalf of the Bad Berleburg Association (Hgg), Bad Berleburg 2008.
  • Mark Häberlein , “Mohren”, corporate society and the Atlantic world, in: Atlantic Understandings: Essays on European and American History in Honor of Hermann Wellenreuther, Hamburg 2006.
  • Wolfram Schäfer (1947–2012), From "Kammermohren", "Mohren" -tambours and "Ost" -Indians. Notes on the living conditions and ways of life of a minority in the 18th century with special consideration of the royal seat of Kassel , in: Hessische Blätter für Volks- und Kulturforschung, Volume 23, Jonas Verlag Marburg 1988.
  • Monika Firla, Hof- und other “Mohren” as the earliest layer of the arrival of Africans in Germany, in: New Home Germany, Aspects of Immigration, Acculturation and Emotional Bonding, Hartmut Heller (ed.), Erlangen, Germany, Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg , 2002.
  • Rebekka von Mallinckrodt , Negotiated (In) Freedom - Slavery, Serfdom and Inner-European Knowledge Transfer at the End of the 18th Century, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 43, Bremen 2017.
  • Johann Georg Hinsberg , Berleburger Bilderbuch, Vorländer Siegen publishing house 1912, second edition, 1929.
  • Johann Georg Hinsberg, Sayn = Wittgenstein = Berleburg IV. Cultural history as part of a dwarf state or the County of Wittgenstein = Berleburg under the government of Count Ludwig Ferdinand (1741–1773), self-published, Winckel printing house, Berleburg 1925.
  • Monika Firla, Africans and their descendants in Africans in Germany and black Germans - past and present: Contributions to the conference of the same name in the NS Documentation Center (El-DE-Haus), Cologne, March 2004.
  • Klaus Mengel, houses in Berleburg that survived the fire of July 20/21, 1825, as well as the houses rebuilt afterwards by those damaged by the fire, as well as other houses built before and after 1825. Bad Berleburg 2009.
  • Karl Hartnack , emigration from the County of Wittgenstein Berleburg to North America in 1796, Wittgenstein, vol. 49, 1961, vol. 25, issue 3.
  • Dieter Bald, Caspar and Coridon - memory of two "Moors" in the royal seat of Berleburg in the 18th century. Wittgenstein, Blätter des Wittgensteiner Heimatverein, Jg. 107, Aug. 2019, Vol. 83, H. 2.  

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Bald, Caspar and Coridon - Memory of two "Moors" in the royal seat of Berleburg in the 18th century. Wittgenstein, Blätter des Wittgensteiner Heimatverein, Jg. 107, Aug. 2019, Vol. 83, H. 2, p. 52.
  2. ↑ Johann Daniel Scheffer wrote in the Berleburger Chroniken: “ Anno Domini 1752, d. On August 31, 2 little Moors were sent as a present from Holland to our ruling lord, each 12 years old. “Wilhelm Hartnack, Die Berleburger Chroniken des Georg Cornelius, Antonius Crawelius and Johann Daniel Scheffer. In: Wittgenstein - Blätter des Wittgensteiner Heimatverein eV, supplement 2, Laasphe 1964, p. 202.
  3. ↑ Die Mohrentaufe zu Berleburg In: Johann Georg Hinsberg, Berleburger Bilderbuch, Verlag Vorländer Siegen 1912, Second Edition 1929, pp. 1-3.
  4. ↑ The 13th Decembris was buried here in the quiet Ludwig Friedrich Caspar, a Mohr, America, from the island of Surinam and Berbice, who ruled here. Diensten, was released as Lauffer, Hornay […], about his age and almost 30 years after September 21, 1757 in the baptism register. Church book Berleburg, burials 1754–1780, p. 100.
  5. ↑ Coridon had several children with the bourgeois daughter Maria Magdalena Kersting and in 1794/95 was run as a count's, fruit writer, official administrator 'with an annual salary of 60 Reichstalers. He was one of the better paid officials in the small county and obviously enjoyed the trust of the ruling prince. Mark Häberlein, “Mohren”, corporate society and the Atlantic world in: Atlantic Understandings: Essays on European and American History in Honor of Hermann Wellenreuther, Hamburg 2006, pp. 88–89.
  6. ↑ In 1783 the African Coridon worked in the Berleburg rulership as a 'fruit writer [and] office administrator' . Monika Firla: Africans and their descendants in Africans in Germany and black Germans - past and present: Contributions to the conference of the same name in the NS Documentation Center (El-DE-Haus), Cologne, March 2004, p. 18.
  7. ↑ Anno 1780 d. 5th June has building managers Coridon and Herrschetztl. Koch should have their two houses open under one roof next to the Schaffhoff. Berleburger Chroniken, p. 262
  8. ↑ Anno 1783, No. 699, Herr Bauverwalter and Leibhusar Coridon, a mohr, born from the wild, and his wife Maria Magdalena, born Kerstingin, and neither of them are children of the Burgers, as if he were giving 20 reichsthaler to burger capital or 1 reichsthaler to interest And the woman, if someone was born here, is counted as someone who comes from the country to the city, as burgercapital 6 reichsthaler or zins 13 albus 4 pfennig plus 16 albus a part and 7 ½ header as well as a letter fire eymer, note: dedit. Alfred BRUNS, Berleburger Stadtrechte und Bürgerbuch, Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Volume 10, Münster 1985, p. 203.
  9. ↑ Church book Berleburg, marriages 1774, p. 104.
  10. ^ Church book Berleburg, baptisms 1754–1780, p. 409.
  11. ↑ KB Meinerzhagen, Burials No. 14/1819
personal data
SURNAME Coridon, Ferdinand Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Fruit writer and administrator
DATE OF BIRTH 1736
PLACE OF BIRTH Berbice
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1819
Place of death Meinerzhagen