49. Puschkins afrikanische und europäische Wurzeln

Ancestral voices were strong in Pushkin. Perhaps that is why his foreign origins, so to speak, are important. Up to the end of the nineteenth century, a particular ancestor of Pushkin’s was considered first to be an African, and then an Abyssinian, that is, a native of the country now known as Ethiopia. It is presumed that he came from a noble family. Today it has been shown that the poet’s great-grandfather Ibrahim, nicknamed “the Blackamoor of Peter the Great,” was apparently born not far from Lake Chad, on the borders of contemporary Chad and Cameroon in Africa. Ibrahim had been a child at the outset of a war with Turkey. The Turks carried off trophies of valuables and slaves, among whom was the future poet’s ancestor. At that very time, black-skinned servants had become fashionable in Russia. At the end of the seventeenth century, the boy was given as a gift to Peter I, and christened Abram Hannibal. Curiously enough, though he had been a slave in Turkey, he became a free man in Russia–not at Peter’s whim, but by a law then promulgated. Later on he was made a general for his intelligence and devotion. Abram’s first marriage was to a Greek woman, and subsequently he married a German or Swede by the name of Christina Scherberg, with whom he had children. Abram and Christina’s son Iosif, later Osip, was Pushkin’s grandfather.

Yuri Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia – Mehr

/ April 2004