I think in the 17th and 18th century here black people were mainly a "novelty item" of the rich, because there was no real need for any additional workforce (and depending on the time to various degrees local serfdom still existed anyway), but the real profit was for merchants and their companies in the trafficking. I suspect the fates of those who ended up here as some kind of status symbol must have been varied, but you only hear about very few if at all, like, the first black person to get a doctorate in Germany was actually back in 1734, when Anton Wilhelm Amo got one in philosophy; he had been given as a "gift" to some German duke or other by the Dutch East India Company when he was about four, and got an education as part of the household. As an adult started out in law school (writing his first disputation in Latin on the rights of black people in Europe), then pursued a doctorate in philosophy, and actually taught at several universities for about ten years until 1747, but increasing racism led to professional problems for him (there was a racist public mocking campaign) and he went back to Ghana (the place he had been taken from). But you don't hear about for example the people that Schimmelmann guy kept as status symbol to show he was rich, i.e. those who didn't have some exceptional biography.