Widening economic inequality has been identified as a moral challenge that constitutes a global impediment to socioeconomic well-being. While incongruities exist within any dynamic system, a sustained unequal value distribution can lead to social and economic obstructions for individuals and communities. Entrepreneurship has been identified as a force for good and subsequently funded as an institutional methodology to disburse well-being by democratizing economic empowerment. Current popular approaches are institutionalized in wealthier Western contexts, encapsulated in linear narratives, and aggressively exported to new, foreign environments. Due to the often-unrecognized philosophical assumptions underlying these narratives, current approaches tend to limit the benefits of entrepreneurship to specific audiences and position the promoting institutions as entrepreneurial imperialists, creating an economic hegemony as they reinforce current power dynamics and save the most valuable entrepreneurial exchanges for those with access and resources, often benefiting the institutions economically. While much has been written on removing the impediments to current entrepreneurial approaches, this dissertation prioritizes practical utility by proposing the need for a refreshed philosophical approach, a new entrepreneurial narrative, and dynamic institutional networks that prioritize autonomy towards more effectively engaging a favorite of current entrepreneurial narratives: the rising generation.

This study explores the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century German dramatic genre Sklavenstücke (slave plays). These plays, which until recently have not received any significant attention in scholarship, articulate a nuanced critique of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade and thus bear witness to an early German-language discourse indicative of abolitionist currents.Tracing individual acts of German-language abolitionism, I investigate the correlation between abolitionist movements in the Euro-American space and German involvements in these very efforts. In this sense, I contest the notion of an absence of German abolitionist awareness in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment. My reading of these slave plays contributes to discussions about the transcultural nature of abolitionist discourse and defies the notion that abolitionist activism only emerged within the specific nation-states that have previously been the subject of scholarship. Challenging this layering both theoretically and analytically, then, requires an innovative shift that centers approaches rooted in Black thought and theories, which are the foundation of this study. These concepts are necessary for engaging with issues of slavery and abolition while at the same time exposing white paternalist perspectives and gazes. Plays of this genre often foreground the horrors of slavery at the hands of cruel white slaveholders, and characterize enslaved Black Africans as unblemished, obedient, submissive, hard-working, and grateful “beings” deserving of humanitarian benevolence. Based on these sentiments, an overarching discourse opposing slavery and the transatlantic slave trade emerged by way of German-language theatrical plays, theoretical treatises, newspaper articles, academic writings, travelogues, diary entries, and journal articles that negotiated the nature, origin, and legitimacy of Black African humanity around debates on slavery. Thus, my study demonstrates that these German-language literary contributions indicate inscribed socio-critical commentary and take up transatlantic abolitionist discourses, a dialogue that surfaced under the auspices of the Enlightenment.