Trældoms afskaffelse, symboliseret ved en stående nøgen træl, hvis pande berøres med en stav af Staten 1794

Andreas Weidenhaupt created this relief sculpture, titled ‘Trældoms afskaffelse, symboliseret ved en stående nøgen træl, hvis pande berøres med en stav af Staten’, using an unknown medium. The relief alludes to the abolition of the Danish transatlantic slave trade in 1792, which came into full effect in 1803. Weidenhaupt uses allegory to represent this landmark event. A nude man representing the enslaved is being touched by a figure of the State, an event that would transform him into a free citizen. The classical style places the event outside of any historical context, in the realm of timeless myth, and its reduction of slavery to a transaction between the State and the enslaved serves to erase the role of slave traders and enslaved people themselves from this history. As historians, we can look into newspapers, pamphlets, and legislative documents from the period to find the cultural debates that led to abolition, and understand the nuances of how emancipation was imagined. In this way, we can come to understand the sculpture as a symbolic attempt to shape public memory of the event and its place in the Danish national story.