Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 51
Images of Gypsies, a German Case: Gilad Margalit (PDF file)
Images of Gypsies, a German Case: Gilad Margalit.
Sinti and Roma have lived for over six centuries in Europe and, numbering well
over eight million people, constitute its largest ethnic minority. It is somewhat hard to
estimate the exact numbers of German Sinti and Roma since Germany’s Basic Law
prohibits the collection of ethnic data. Nonetheless, a 1999 report submitted by the
German Government to the “Advisory Committee on Implementation of the Framework
Convention of National Minorities” estimated there to be 70,000 German Sinti and
Roma. Many Romani leaders put the number between 150,00 and 200,000, mindful that
their estimates include all Sinti and Roma living in Germany independent of their
citizenship status1. As a reference year for the first chronicle citation of Sinti and Roma in
Germany, authors2 point to the year 1417 and to Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia as
the first detailed account. Münster was acquainted with Sinti and Roma from Heidelberg,
observing and documenting their customs, which is why his chronicle became the most
colorful, personal, and creditable account. Historically, German Sinti and Roma have
been depicted as nomads and itinerant showmen. Often, the description of Sinti and
Roma as non-sedentary or as people having only atypical occupations allows for further
discrimination against this ethnic group. Portrayed as different from the rest of the
Germans, both in their alleged essence (nomads) and means of livelihood (entertainers,
door-to-door salesmen, or small circus performers), Sinti and Roma continue to be
considered foreign or Fremde, although they have lived in Germany for more than six
centuries. Sinti and Roma are generally characterized as the eternal Gypsy wanderers
who stand outside of the conventional norms.
Although the nomadic lifestyle might be desirable for some Sinti and Roma, as
may also be the case for individuals of various other ethnicities, the argument that all
Sinti and Roma are intrinsically nomadic is reductive and even at times racially
prejudiced. Moreover, the issue of nomadism in relation to Sinti and Roma remains a
1 Source: “State FCNM Report”. http://www.coe.int
2 See Ebhardt, Wilhelm. “Die Zigeuner in der hochdeutschen Literatur bis zu Goethes ‘Götz von
Berlichingen’”. Diss. Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 1928. p. 17.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 52
multifaceted issue that requires a well-balanced approach, even if some Sinti and Roma
do assert their nomadic lifestyle. Accordingly, this paper challenges the antiziganistic
hegemony that essentializes and others Sinti and Roma, forcing an entire group to morph
into a homogenous entity. Particular lifestyles (nomadism or sedentary), types of
occupations, and behavioral characteristics are not tied to a single identity of a group as a
whole, but rather individually determined. Lastly, it is not one of the goals of German
Sinti and Roma to create an artificial so-called “nation state” in which all Sinti and Roma
would be granted citizenship based on their ethnicity. Rather, Germany is the nation state
of German Sinti and Roma3.
As much as the historical data imparts that German Sinti and Roma have lived in
Europe for centuries, the taxonomical description of their culture makes the debate about
their nationality and the nature of their cultural production animated and continuous. In
the spirit of the Enlightenment, research on Roma continues to be based on observation,
collection, classification, and description whereby the researcher’s objectivity frequently
remains unquestioned. Often, the authority of the researcher is established by an
addendum of charts, tables, and other statistical data as an empirical support of their
claims. In his book Time and the Other, postcolonial scholar Johannes Fabian addresses
the issue of the de-temporization of the Other in anthropological writing. In his account,
the Other is the object of a researcher’s study, ontologically and culturally presumed to
be different. Additionally, Fabian maintains that the researcher is allowed to disregard
temporal relations when studying a presumably unchanging, primitive culture. The terms
civilization, evolution, development, acculturation, and modernization are all terms
“whose conceptual content derives from evolutionary time4” (17, footnote added).
3 Romani Rose, the Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and one of the
most prominent political figures in the Sinti and Roma discourse in Germany, asserts that “…the
reality is that the German Sinti and Roma are Germans and Germany is their own home country.
[…]Like the Danes, Sorbians and Frieslanders in Germany, the 70,000 Sinti und Roma in
Germany form a historically developed national minority. Rose, Romani. “Sinti and Roma as
National Minorities in the Countries of Europe”. The Patrin Web Journal. Sept. 3, 1999.
http://www.geocities.com
4 Here, Fabian refers to the notion that non-Europeans were exemplars of the stages of human
development that civilized Europeans had presumably passed through long ago. Allegedly,
Europeans were far apart (far ahead of) in their propensity for development from their non-
European counterparts. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 53
Persistently referring to the time of the Other as not belonging to the contemporary time,
the researcher marginalizes the Other and permanently signifies it as primitive and “notthe-
same.” Partially borrowing from Levi-Strauss, Fabian argues that the taxonomical
description of culture becomes ontological when “it maintains that culture is created by
selection and classification.” The consequent concept of culture is “devoid of a theory,
creativity or production because in a radically taxonomic frame it makes no sense to raise
the question of production. By extension we never appreciate the primitive as producer”
(62). In cultural texts, the examples of portraying Sinti and Roma as primitive, as
gatherers rather than producers, as people completely incapable of relating to modern
society and its economically highly structured system, and as borrowers, if not thieves,
are myriad.
Moreover, the perpetual discrimination against Sinti and Roma is facilitated by
the rhetoric of Gypsies as nationless people, who are first and foremost perceived as not
German (or broader “not European”). As there might be individuals or groups of Sinti
and Roma who indeed would associate with nationless, my emphasis in this critique will
be on the general argument of the inherent nationless of Sinti and Roma as eternal
wanderers incapable of relating to conventional lifestyle. It is the homogenizing feature
of the discourse about Sinti and Roma that makes it antiziganistic. Similarly, some Sinti
and Roma might adhere to the nomadic lifestyle, as do individuals of various other
ethnicities across the world, but the contention that all Sinti and Roma are inherently
nomadic is racially prejudiced. Additionally, due to the historical circumstances
associated with nomadism and Gypsies, such as the anti-Gypsy laws explicitly targeting
Sinti and Roma’s alleged itinerant way of life and trades, the issue of nomadism in
relation to Gypsies remains a multifaceted issue that has not yet been studied in all its
dimensions.
In his 1996 article “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic
of Germany: A Parallel with Antisemitism?”5 and his 2002 book Germany and Its
Gypsies
6
historian Gilad Margalit characterizes and exploits the cultural construct
5 Margalit, Gilad. “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A
Parallel with Antisemitism?”. The Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism. No. 9, 1996.
6 Margalit, Gilad. Germany and Its Gypsies. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 54
“Gypsy” (he is only one of many authors who manipulates the construct7). By critically
engaging with this construct, I will illustrate here8 some of the characteristics of the
persistent nature of the contemporary discourse about Sinti and Roma that continues to
study “Gypsies” as unchanging and primitive (“disregards temporal relations”). The
critique of Margalit’s marginalization of the persecution of Sinti and Roma, both prior to
and in the Holocaust, as well as in post-war Germany, allows me to delineate some of the
general misconceptions still circulating within the Romany discourse (both in German
and American scholarship9). He portrays Gypsies (his term for Sinti and Roma) as
stateless, apolitical, and criminal nomads, and in doing so creates fertile ground for
continuous discrimination against Sinti and Roma. His characterization of Gypsies
parallels historical, narrative, and ethnographic texts, which in similar fashion typify Sinti
and Roma as uncivilized and uncultured Gypsies (outside of terms “derived from
evolutionary time”, e.g. “civilization, evolution, development, acculturation,
modernization…”)10.
7 On the topic of “political unconsciousness” and “wandering (stateless)” Gypsies, see Brearley,
Margaret. “The Roma/Gypsies of Europe: a persecuted people”. In: Research Report for: Institute
for Jewish Policy Research. No. 3, 1996.; an ethnographic account of Gypsies, see Fonseca,
Isabel. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.; the
“Gypsy occupations” and “otherness”, see Hermann, Arnold. Das Fahrende Volk.
Neustadt/Weinstraße: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1980.; the Gypsy records and research in the
Third Reich, see Justin, Eva. “Lebensschicksale artfremd erzogener Zigeunerkinder und ihrer
Nachkommen.” Diss. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 1943.; For the constructs “Gypsy
musician” and “Gypsy being”, see: Block, Martin. Zigeuner, ihr Leben und ihre Seele: dargestellt
auf Grund eigener Reisen und Forschungen. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institute, a.g., 1936.; on
Gypsy police records and persecution, see Dillmann, Alfred. Das Zigeuner-Buch. München: Dr.
Wild’sche Buchdruckerei, 1905.
8 I will concentrate primarily on Margalit’s article; most of his chief ideas from the article were
later elaborated in his 2002 book.
9 Margalit is an Israeli historian and lecturer in the Department of General History at the
University of Haifa, Israel. Some of his scholarship has been published in America (e.g.
University of Wisconsin Press); however, the majority of his writing is specific to Germany, is
distributed in Germany, and the majority of secondary literature is German (e.g. Peter Widmann;
see footnote 7).
10 See: Widmann, Peter. “Germany and Its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal”. Journal of Social
History. Summer, 2005. Widmann, in his review of Margalit’s book Germany and Its Gypsies,
critiques Margalit’s “socio-psychological speculations” (“the author relies less on analysis
supported by research sources than on […] speculations”) behind the supposedly questionable
motivations of Sinti and Roma activists, their supporters, and in general, the political work of the
Sinti Civil Rights Movement.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 55
One of Gilad Margalit’s central claims is that “racist antigypsyism began in
Germany only in the late decades of the nineteenth century and existed on the margins of
racist antisemitism.”11 In the article, he characterizes the contemporary as well as
centuries-old antigypsism as “superficial”, “less dramatic in character”, lacking
“demonizing characteristics” and “the element of ‘conspiracy’ that was dominant in
nineteenth-century antisemitism.” He asserts that the Gypsy within German culture could
be categorized as the “known other”, for Sinti and Roma’s coexistence in Europe is six
centuries old. “For generations, the Sinti […] wandered in specific regions and
consequently mastered the local dialects. […] Their fortune-telling skills left its
impression in German (and non-German) literature and folklore” (2). Lastly, Margalit
contends that antigypsism “was never a political issue in Germany previous to the Third
Reich” and that “…the ‘Gypsy Question’ was a marginal issue on the Nazi agenda; it was
part of the so called ‘Social Question’—the problem of the lower and poorer strata from
which many criminals supposedly came, and on which most of the public welfare
expenditure was spent” (2). He concludes that, “Due to these factors the Romanies and
their bitter fate in the Third Reich did not become a central subject in post-1945 German
political culture until the 1980s” (3). Although Margalit includes the alarming findings of
the 1994 Emnid public opinion poll, according to which “68 percent of the Germans
agreed they would not like to have Romanies as their neighbors”, he fails to make an
analytical assessment of antiziganism that would satisfactorily explain the continuing
sweeping prejudice against Sinti and Roma. The same poll reveals the disproportionate
hatred towards Sinti and Roma in comparison to other ethnic groups, such as Arabs,
Poles, Africans, Turks, and Jews12.
In order to show that “…hostility toward the Romanies lacked a religious temper
and demonizing characteristics” Margalit evokes so-called “romantic” images of Gypsies
evident in “centuries of coexistence.” “The romantic aspect of the Gypsy image became a
11 “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A Parallel with
Antisemitism?”. p. 1. From his writing, it is not explicitly clear why Margalit chooses to compare
and contrast antiziganism with antisemitism, apart from the manifest prejudice and racism
inherent in both. Unlike Margalit, in my analysis of the construct “Gypsy”, I only occasionally
draw comparisons between antiziganism and antisemitism, for my primary study centers around
the “Gypsy”. As such, his assessment of antisemitism is not a focus of this work.
12 Arabs, 47%; Poles, 39%; Africans, 37%; Turks, 36%; and Jews, 22%, (Margalit, 4).
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 56
symbol for freedom as early as the seventeenth century. [...] ...depiction of the Romani
lifestyle as true, natural, and passionate influenced generations in Germany and
elsewhere...” (2). Similarly, Margalit sentimentalizes Gypsies’ ”fortune-telling skills”
that “left its impression in German (and non-German) literature and folklore.” The same
literature generally typified Gypsies (especially women) as deceitful, unscrupulous, and
dangerous vagabonds13. The antigypsy laws highlight the authorities’ particular disdain
for Gypsy fortune-tellers14. Lastly, Margalit’s assertions that “antigypsyism was never a
political issue in Germany previous to the Third Reich” and that “…the ‘Gypsy Question’
was a marginal issue on the Nazi agenda…” are erroneous15. While evoking alleged
romantic16 images of free-roaming Gypsies that might lead to the conclusion that
antigypsism is “superficial”, “less demonizing”, and “not political”17 Margalit fails to
scrutinize any antigypsy decrees and edicts passed by the German authorities targeting
and limiting the movement, settlement, and coexistence of Sinti and Roma since their
13 See: Ebhardt, Wilhelm. “Die Zigeuner in der hochdeutschen Literatur bis zu Goethes ‘Götz von
Berlichingen’”. Diss. Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 1928.
14 See: Dilmman, Alfred. Das Zigeuner-Buch. München: Dr. Wild’sche Buchdruckerei, 1905.
15 On March 17, 1982 then Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, in front of the special
delegation of Sinti and Roma under the leadership of Romani Rose, publicly acknowledged that
Sinti and Roma were persecuted on the basis of “race” in the Holocaust (“Bundeskanzler Helmut
Schmidt…anerkannte den Völkermord an den Sinti und Roma aus Gründen der sogennaten
“Rasse”; Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma. Home Page. 12 June 2006.
http://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de More recently, on May 29, 2006, by the invitation of the Prime
Minister of Poland, Kazimierz Marcinkewicz, Rose became a member of the International
Auschwitz Committee (“Mitglied des Internationalen Auschwitz-Rats”).
16 Although there is no exact equivalent to philosemitism within the Romany discourse per se, it
could be argued that the exaggerated positive statements (since overt ziganism tends to be
socially unacceptable) about Gypsies are manifestly philoziganism.
17 See: “Germany and its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal”, book review at RomNews Network
Community, March 26, 2003. http://www.romnews.com/de According to book reviewer,
“Margalit’s aim [in this book] […] is less to provoke sympathy for the continued suffering of
Romanies, and more to dispute their claims to have been equal victims to the Jews in the
Holocaust. Presented as a study of German attitudes towards Romanies, this book is actually a
contribution to the disheartening literature of ethnic competition for victimhood status”. The
reviewer points to Margalit’s unfounded claim that “despite everything, Gypsies, in contrast to
Jews, were perceived by Himmler…to be part of the German fatherland and not its foe”, p. 53 of
Margalit’s book. Reviewer concludes that regrettably “Margalit’s aim here [from Margalit’s
claim that since Roma “had no contact with the German population, it seems unlikely that the
extermination of the Roma constituted part of the German attempt to protect the racial purity of
the German population”, Margalit p. 48] is to establish a clear difference between the Nazi
treatment of the Romanies, on one hand, and the Jews on the other, making it plain that it was the
latter who were the true victims of Nazis”.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 57
arrival to Germany. The abundance and evident forcefulness of these laws elucidate the
politically, racially, and culturally motivated exclusion of Gypsies from the rest of
German society and Margalit’s emphasis on romantic imagery obscures this fact.
In his book Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland mit besonderer Berücksichtigung
der Zeit zwischen 1918-1945 (The Persecution of Gypsies: 1918-1945), historian
Mohammad Gharaati outlines the persecution of Sinti and Roma in Germany. According
to Gharaati, between the years 1500 and 180018 the German authorities passed 148
antigypsy edicts preventing Sinti and Roma from acquiring permanent residency and
employment (32). Decades before the rise of the Third Reich, German police and various
government ministries enacted laws according to which all Sinti and Roma residing in
Germany were required to register with the police and unemployment agencies in each
district, be fingerprinted and photographed, and have their genealogical data recorded19.
From April to December of 1907, a few years after the establishment of the special
“Gypsy Affairs Agency” (“Nachrichtendienst in Bezug auf die Zigeuner”, 1899) in
Munich under the directorship of the criminal investigator Alfred Dillmann, there were
289 criminal cases filed against Gypsies, the majority of which were for such trivial
offenses as camping or driving a defective car (59). The antiziganistic vehemence
inherent in such laws, as explained in Gharaati’s work, coupled with the general literary
18 In addition to the earliest antigypsy edicts (from 1500 to 1800), the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries reveal intense, politically motivated assimilation policies in both the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and the German lands. Thousands of Gypsy children were forcefully taken
from their parents’ homes and placed into orphanages or non-Gypsy families for the purposes of
reeducation and assimilation. Often the parents were sent to Arbeitshäuser, places of forced labor.
It is not difficult to foresee the devastating consequences of such actions on Romany families and
the generations of unnaturally orphaned Sinti and Roma children. Similarly to the Romany
historian Ian Hancock, a professor of Romany Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, I argue
that such policies were often attempts to destroy Romany language and Sinti and Roma culture.
See: Hancock, Ian. “Chronology”. The Romani Archives and Documentation Center.
http://www.radoc.net Hancock cites the efforts of such assimilation policies in the example of the
Nordhausen authorities (from 1830) asserting that such projects had a goal to “eradicate the
Romani population by removing the children for permanent placement with non-Romani
families”.
19 Despite the terms of Article 108 of the National Constitution of the Weimar Republic (ratified
in 1919 and 1921), which guaranteed Sinti and Roma full and equal citizenship rights,
antiziganism throughout the German-speaking lands was widespread and on the rise in the
beginning of the twentieth century. The similar registration of Jews in Germany was mandatory
during the Third Reich. As non-Sinti and Roma citizens were also required (and still are) to
register upon living and acquiring a new address (Anmeldung and Abmeldung), they were not
fingerprinted, photographed, and their genealogies were not recorded.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 58
descriptions of Gypsies as Tatars, Turkish spies, Egyptians, carriers of the plague, traitors
to Christendom, and invaders in general, speak against Sinti and Roma as the “known
other(s).”20 Gypsies are indeed perceived by the political authorities as “the element(s) of
‘conspiracy’” within German society, notwithstanding that their history in Germany is
over six centuries long. By considering the historical data that Gharaati presents, we see
how Margalit fails to reveal the mendacity inherent in the romanticization of “wandering”
Gypsies.
Based on extensive research of the anti-Gypsy laws21, the persevering
antiziganistic attitudes, and the contemporary literature of the Sinti and Roma political
activists, it is my contention (contrary to Margalit) that most Sinti and Roma “traveled”
in order to comply with the law and out of necessity to find employment. For example, in
his book Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland
22
(The History of
Persecution of Gypsies in Germany), Joachim Hohmann highlights the immensity of anti-
Gypsy laws since Sinti and Roma’s arrival to Germany. These ordinances targeted the
movement and prohibited the settlement of Gypsies. Hohmann concludes that based on
his analysis of the anti-Gypsy laws the image of a free-roaming Gypsy is merely a
20 For the chronology of the depiction of the literary figure “Gypsy”, see Ebhardt Wilhelm’s
dissertation (cited in footnote 10).
21 On February 17th 1906, the Prussian Minister of the Interior (Prussian Law) issued a directive
entitled “Combating the Gypsy Nuisance” (“Die Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens”)
guaranteeing the expulsion of Sinti and Roma from not only Prussia but the surrounding countries
as well. Prussia introduced “Gypsy licenses”, requirements for all Gypsies that would allow them
to stay in the region, but not to settle permanently. On July 16th, 1926, the Bavarian “Law for
Combating Gypsies, Vagabonds and Idlers” (“Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Zigeunern,
Landfahrern und Arbeitsscheuen”) proposed a year earlier at the 1925 conference, was passed.
Firstly, the law reiterated that Gypsies are a different race, secondly that they are by nature
opposed to all work, and thirdly that they should be subjected to forced labor. Pre-Holocaust
Germany targeted Gypsies by law, classifying them as so-called non-Aryans and those seen as
unworthy of living. “The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” was passed
in 1933, making forceful sterilization legal and ordering sterilization of Gypsies, Jews, Germans
of black color, disabled, and alleged asocials. On September 17, 1933, “The National Citizenship
Law” relegated Gypsies and Jews to the status of second-class citizens, and deprived them of
their civil rights. In the same year under the second Nuremberg “Law for Prevention of Blood and
Honor” intermarriage or sexual relationships between Aryans and non-Aryans, including the
Gypsies, was outlawed. The subsequent internment in the concentration camps and Heinrich
Himmler’s signing of the Auschwitz decree on December 16, 1942 authorizing elimination of
Gypsies, resulted in murder of 500,000 Sinti and Roma.
22 Hohmann, Joachim, S. Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland. Frankfurt/New
York: Campus Verlag, 1988.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 59
cultural construct. “Under these circumstances, that there could have existed an
unrestrained, free-roaming nomadic way of life is out of question” (80)23. While some
Sinti and Roma choose to lead a nomadic lifestyle (as do individuals of other ethnicities
throughout the world), the contention that all Sinti and Roma are inherently nomadic is at
best reductive and at worst racially prejudiced.
The extermination of Sinti and Roma resulting in deaths of more than 500,000
Sinti and Roma could hardly be summarized as “marginal” and “not politically
motivated.”24 It certainly was not due to the lack of antiziganism that the persecution of
Sinti and Roma before and during the Holocaust “did not become a central subject in
post-1945 German political culture until the 1980s.” Contrary to Margalit (and an array
of similar authors), I argue that post-war attitudes towards Sinti and Roma, exemplified
by the absence of a single Sinti and Roma witness at the Nuremberg trial, the fact that no
reparation monies were paid, or the denial, well into the 1980s, of their genocide in the
Holocaust, are centered around the construct “Gypsy”. By supporting the unchanging and
unchallenged nature of this construct, Margalit’s writing furthers this particular
discrimination of Sinti and Roma. Surely, the approach of non-Gypsies towards Gypsies
was adjusted to the spirit of the era, but the belief in the Gypsy essence, and the
prejudiced vision inherent in such a viewpoint, remained the same.
In his analysis of the history of madness, Madness and Civilization
25, Michel
Foucault reminds readers that in order to understand the relationship between the sane
and insane in any given epoch one must begin to examine the silence, what has not been
said about the changing treatment of those labeled as the insane. The belief in a particular
and anomalous essence of the insane, which makes them ontologically different than
those categorized as the sane, supports the further belief in a permanent essence of being,
and in this case, radically different and possibly dangerous. The idea that there could be
23 “Von einem ungebundenen, freien Wanderleben konnte unter diesen Bedingungen keine Rede
sein…” (80).
24 “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A Parallel with
Antisemitism?”, p. 2 (“Racist antigypsyism began in Germany only in the late decades of the
nineteenth century and existed on the margins of racist antisemitism. In contrast to the latter,
however, racist antigypsism had no political character. Furthermore, the racist preoccupation with
the Romanies in Germany, as in England, was not solely negative”; emphasis added).
25 Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization. trans. Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon,
1965. p. 3-37 (especially 6 and 7), 66-7, 211 (fear of madness).
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 60
an irredeemable Gypsy essence, or what Slavoj Žižek terms the “real kernel”26, that could
be qualitatively assessed, led to Sinti and Roma’s extermination in the Holocaust.
In summary, as only some Sinti and Roma identify with “mobility” and non-wage
labor, it is antiziganistic to characterize an entire group as inherently and uniformly
nomadic and communal, particularly due to the generalized, culturally assigned anti-
Gypsy connotations that such descriptions generate. The celebrated Gypsy innocence and
worry-free lifestyle are presumably what makes them Gypsies. They all dance, sing, play
music, and have strong communal relations. The persistence of the belief that all Gypsies
create and remain in close-knit communities has had certain detrimental effects, one
example of which is the common belief in high rates of incest among Gypsies. Certainly
it is not Sinti and Roma’s alleged racial inferiority or general inability that pigeonholes
them in the role of wedding musicians and traveling salesmen. Instead, a revision and
careful evaluation of the autonomy of expression and the necessity of the space for such
exhibition is needed. Often forced to be on the move, Sinti and Roma frequently did not
have access to education or public life in the past. The children of those Sinti and Roma
who would permanently settle in an area faced continued persecution in schools and
communities, and the adult Sinti and Roma were often performing menial services for
those in power and with prominent positions. Pointing to the paradigm and the
predicament of subaltern women, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her article “Can the
Subaltern Speak?”27, asserts that at the crux of the problem is not merely speaking,
having nothing to say or that no accounts of the subject-consciousness of women exist,
but that she is allocated no position of utterance. Appropriating Spivak’s gender-centered
critique, it could be said that by ignoring the efforts and achievements of hundreds of
organizations and people working for the rights of Sinti and Roma, such as European
Roma Rights Center, Roma National Congress, Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, Roma
Section, Union Romani, Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma, Dokumentations-und
Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, Romani Rose, Wilhelm Spindler, Anton
Franz, William Duna, and Ian Hancock, to name a few, authors curtail the impact the
26 Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London and New York: Verso, 1989.
27 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg, eds. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of
over eight million people, constitute its largest ethnic minority. It is somewhat hard to
estimate the exact numbers of German Sinti and Roma since Germany’s Basic Law
prohibits the collection of ethnic data. Nonetheless, a 1999 report submitted by the
German Government to the “Advisory Committee on Implementation of the Framework
Convention of National Minorities” estimated there to be 70,000 German Sinti and
Roma. Many Romani leaders put the number between 150,00 and 200,000, mindful that
their estimates include all Sinti and Roma living in Germany independent of their
citizenship status1. As a reference year for the first chronicle citation of Sinti and Roma in
Germany, authors2 point to the year 1417 and to Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia as
the first detailed account. Münster was acquainted with Sinti and Roma from Heidelberg,
observing and documenting their customs, which is why his chronicle became the most
colorful, personal, and creditable account. Historically, German Sinti and Roma have
been depicted as nomads and itinerant showmen. Often, the description of Sinti and
Roma as non-sedentary or as people having only atypical occupations allows for further
discrimination against this ethnic group. Portrayed as different from the rest of the
Germans, both in their alleged essence (nomads) and means of livelihood (entertainers,
door-to-door salesmen, or small circus performers), Sinti and Roma continue to be
considered foreign or Fremde, although they have lived in Germany for more than six
centuries. Sinti and Roma are generally characterized as the eternal Gypsy wanderers
who stand outside of the conventional norms.
Although the nomadic lifestyle might be desirable for some Sinti and Roma, as
may also be the case for individuals of various other ethnicities, the argument that all
Sinti and Roma are intrinsically nomadic is reductive and even at times racially
prejudiced. Moreover, the issue of nomadism in relation to Sinti and Roma remains a
1 Source: “State FCNM Report”. http://www.coe.int
2 See Ebhardt, Wilhelm. “Die Zigeuner in der hochdeutschen Literatur bis zu Goethes ‘Götz von
Berlichingen’”. Diss. Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 1928. p. 17.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 52
multifaceted issue that requires a well-balanced approach, even if some Sinti and Roma
do assert their nomadic lifestyle. Accordingly, this paper challenges the antiziganistic
hegemony that essentializes and others Sinti and Roma, forcing an entire group to morph
into a homogenous entity. Particular lifestyles (nomadism or sedentary), types of
occupations, and behavioral characteristics are not tied to a single identity of a group as a
whole, but rather individually determined. Lastly, it is not one of the goals of German
Sinti and Roma to create an artificial so-called “nation state” in which all Sinti and Roma
would be granted citizenship based on their ethnicity. Rather, Germany is the nation state
of German Sinti and Roma3.
As much as the historical data imparts that German Sinti and Roma have lived in
Europe for centuries, the taxonomical description of their culture makes the debate about
their nationality and the nature of their cultural production animated and continuous. In
the spirit of the Enlightenment, research on Roma continues to be based on observation,
collection, classification, and description whereby the researcher’s objectivity frequently
remains unquestioned. Often, the authority of the researcher is established by an
addendum of charts, tables, and other statistical data as an empirical support of their
claims. In his book Time and the Other, postcolonial scholar Johannes Fabian addresses
the issue of the de-temporization of the Other in anthropological writing. In his account,
the Other is the object of a researcher’s study, ontologically and culturally presumed to
be different. Additionally, Fabian maintains that the researcher is allowed to disregard
temporal relations when studying a presumably unchanging, primitive culture. The terms
civilization, evolution, development, acculturation, and modernization are all terms
“whose conceptual content derives from evolutionary time4” (17, footnote added).
3 Romani Rose, the Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and one of the
most prominent political figures in the Sinti and Roma discourse in Germany, asserts that “…the
reality is that the German Sinti and Roma are Germans and Germany is their own home country.
[…]Like the Danes, Sorbians and Frieslanders in Germany, the 70,000 Sinti und Roma in
Germany form a historically developed national minority. Rose, Romani. “Sinti and Roma as
National Minorities in the Countries of Europe”. The Patrin Web Journal. Sept. 3, 1999.
http://www.geocities.com
4 Here, Fabian refers to the notion that non-Europeans were exemplars of the stages of human
development that civilized Europeans had presumably passed through long ago. Allegedly,
Europeans were far apart (far ahead of) in their propensity for development from their non-
European counterparts. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Nebula3.4, December 2006
Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 53
Persistently referring to the time of the Other as not belonging to the contemporary time,
the researcher marginalizes the Other and permanently signifies it as primitive and “notthe-
same.” Partially borrowing from Levi-Strauss, Fabian argues that the taxonomical
description of culture becomes ontological when “it maintains that culture is created by
selection and classification.” The consequent concept of culture is “devoid of a theory,
creativity or production because in a radically taxonomic frame it makes no sense to raise
the question of production. By extension we never appreciate the primitive as producer”
(62). In cultural texts, the examples of portraying Sinti and Roma as primitive, as
gatherers rather than producers, as people completely incapable of relating to modern
society and its economically highly structured system, and as borrowers, if not thieves,
are myriad.
Moreover, the perpetual discrimination against Sinti and Roma is facilitated by
the rhetoric of Gypsies as nationless people, who are first and foremost perceived as not
German (or broader “not European”). As there might be individuals or groups of Sinti
and Roma who indeed would associate with nationless, my emphasis in this critique will
be on the general argument of the inherent nationless of Sinti and Roma as eternal
wanderers incapable of relating to conventional lifestyle. It is the homogenizing feature
of the discourse about Sinti and Roma that makes it antiziganistic. Similarly, some Sinti
and Roma might adhere to the nomadic lifestyle, as do individuals of various other
ethnicities across the world, but the contention that all Sinti and Roma are inherently
nomadic is racially prejudiced. Additionally, due to the historical circumstances
associated with nomadism and Gypsies, such as the anti-Gypsy laws explicitly targeting
Sinti and Roma’s alleged itinerant way of life and trades, the issue of nomadism in
relation to Gypsies remains a multifaceted issue that has not yet been studied in all its
dimensions.
In his 1996 article “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic
of Germany: A Parallel with Antisemitism?”5 and his 2002 book Germany and Its
Gypsies
6
historian Gilad Margalit characterizes and exploits the cultural construct
5 Margalit, Gilad. “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A
Parallel with Antisemitism?”. The Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism. No. 9, 1996.
6 Margalit, Gilad. Germany and Its Gypsies. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Nebula3.4, December 2006
Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 54
“Gypsy” (he is only one of many authors who manipulates the construct7). By critically
engaging with this construct, I will illustrate here8 some of the characteristics of the
persistent nature of the contemporary discourse about Sinti and Roma that continues to
study “Gypsies” as unchanging and primitive (“disregards temporal relations”). The
critique of Margalit’s marginalization of the persecution of Sinti and Roma, both prior to
and in the Holocaust, as well as in post-war Germany, allows me to delineate some of the
general misconceptions still circulating within the Romany discourse (both in German
and American scholarship9). He portrays Gypsies (his term for Sinti and Roma) as
stateless, apolitical, and criminal nomads, and in doing so creates fertile ground for
continuous discrimination against Sinti and Roma. His characterization of Gypsies
parallels historical, narrative, and ethnographic texts, which in similar fashion typify Sinti
and Roma as uncivilized and uncultured Gypsies (outside of terms “derived from
evolutionary time”, e.g. “civilization, evolution, development, acculturation,
modernization…”)10.
7 On the topic of “political unconsciousness” and “wandering (stateless)” Gypsies, see Brearley,
Margaret. “The Roma/Gypsies of Europe: a persecuted people”. In: Research Report for: Institute
for Jewish Policy Research. No. 3, 1996.; an ethnographic account of Gypsies, see Fonseca,
Isabel. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.; the
“Gypsy occupations” and “otherness”, see Hermann, Arnold. Das Fahrende Volk.
Neustadt/Weinstraße: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1980.; the Gypsy records and research in the
Third Reich, see Justin, Eva. “Lebensschicksale artfremd erzogener Zigeunerkinder und ihrer
Nachkommen.” Diss. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 1943.; For the constructs “Gypsy
musician” and “Gypsy being”, see: Block, Martin. Zigeuner, ihr Leben und ihre Seele: dargestellt
auf Grund eigener Reisen und Forschungen. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institute, a.g., 1936.; on
Gypsy police records and persecution, see Dillmann, Alfred. Das Zigeuner-Buch. München: Dr.
Wild’sche Buchdruckerei, 1905.
8 I will concentrate primarily on Margalit’s article; most of his chief ideas from the article were
later elaborated in his 2002 book.
9 Margalit is an Israeli historian and lecturer in the Department of General History at the
University of Haifa, Israel. Some of his scholarship has been published in America (e.g.
University of Wisconsin Press); however, the majority of his writing is specific to Germany, is
distributed in Germany, and the majority of secondary literature is German (e.g. Peter Widmann;
see footnote 7).
10 See: Widmann, Peter. “Germany and Its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal”. Journal of Social
History. Summer, 2005. Widmann, in his review of Margalit’s book Germany and Its Gypsies,
critiques Margalit’s “socio-psychological speculations” (“the author relies less on analysis
supported by research sources than on […] speculations”) behind the supposedly questionable
motivations of Sinti and Roma activists, their supporters, and in general, the political work of the
Sinti Civil Rights Movement.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 55
One of Gilad Margalit’s central claims is that “racist antigypsyism began in
Germany only in the late decades of the nineteenth century and existed on the margins of
racist antisemitism.”11 In the article, he characterizes the contemporary as well as
centuries-old antigypsism as “superficial”, “less dramatic in character”, lacking
“demonizing characteristics” and “the element of ‘conspiracy’ that was dominant in
nineteenth-century antisemitism.” He asserts that the Gypsy within German culture could
be categorized as the “known other”, for Sinti and Roma’s coexistence in Europe is six
centuries old. “For generations, the Sinti […] wandered in specific regions and
consequently mastered the local dialects. […] Their fortune-telling skills left its
impression in German (and non-German) literature and folklore” (2). Lastly, Margalit
contends that antigypsism “was never a political issue in Germany previous to the Third
Reich” and that “…the ‘Gypsy Question’ was a marginal issue on the Nazi agenda; it was
part of the so called ‘Social Question’—the problem of the lower and poorer strata from
which many criminals supposedly came, and on which most of the public welfare
expenditure was spent” (2). He concludes that, “Due to these factors the Romanies and
their bitter fate in the Third Reich did not become a central subject in post-1945 German
political culture until the 1980s” (3). Although Margalit includes the alarming findings of
the 1994 Emnid public opinion poll, according to which “68 percent of the Germans
agreed they would not like to have Romanies as their neighbors”, he fails to make an
analytical assessment of antiziganism that would satisfactorily explain the continuing
sweeping prejudice against Sinti and Roma. The same poll reveals the disproportionate
hatred towards Sinti and Roma in comparison to other ethnic groups, such as Arabs,
Poles, Africans, Turks, and Jews12.
In order to show that “…hostility toward the Romanies lacked a religious temper
and demonizing characteristics” Margalit evokes so-called “romantic” images of Gypsies
evident in “centuries of coexistence.” “The romantic aspect of the Gypsy image became a
11 “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A Parallel with
Antisemitism?”. p. 1. From his writing, it is not explicitly clear why Margalit chooses to compare
and contrast antiziganism with antisemitism, apart from the manifest prejudice and racism
inherent in both. Unlike Margalit, in my analysis of the construct “Gypsy”, I only occasionally
draw comparisons between antiziganism and antisemitism, for my primary study centers around
the “Gypsy”. As such, his assessment of antisemitism is not a focus of this work.
12 Arabs, 47%; Poles, 39%; Africans, 37%; Turks, 36%; and Jews, 22%, (Margalit, 4).
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 56
symbol for freedom as early as the seventeenth century. [...] ...depiction of the Romani
lifestyle as true, natural, and passionate influenced generations in Germany and
elsewhere...” (2). Similarly, Margalit sentimentalizes Gypsies’ ”fortune-telling skills”
that “left its impression in German (and non-German) literature and folklore.” The same
literature generally typified Gypsies (especially women) as deceitful, unscrupulous, and
dangerous vagabonds13. The antigypsy laws highlight the authorities’ particular disdain
for Gypsy fortune-tellers14. Lastly, Margalit’s assertions that “antigypsyism was never a
political issue in Germany previous to the Third Reich” and that “…the ‘Gypsy Question’
was a marginal issue on the Nazi agenda…” are erroneous15. While evoking alleged
romantic16 images of free-roaming Gypsies that might lead to the conclusion that
antigypsism is “superficial”, “less demonizing”, and “not political”17 Margalit fails to
scrutinize any antigypsy decrees and edicts passed by the German authorities targeting
and limiting the movement, settlement, and coexistence of Sinti and Roma since their
13 See: Ebhardt, Wilhelm. “Die Zigeuner in der hochdeutschen Literatur bis zu Goethes ‘Götz von
Berlichingen’”. Diss. Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 1928.
14 See: Dilmman, Alfred. Das Zigeuner-Buch. München: Dr. Wild’sche Buchdruckerei, 1905.
15 On March 17, 1982 then Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, in front of the special
delegation of Sinti and Roma under the leadership of Romani Rose, publicly acknowledged that
Sinti and Roma were persecuted on the basis of “race” in the Holocaust (“Bundeskanzler Helmut
Schmidt…anerkannte den Völkermord an den Sinti und Roma aus Gründen der sogennaten
“Rasse”; Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma. Home Page. 12 June 2006.
http://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de More recently, on May 29, 2006, by the invitation of the Prime
Minister of Poland, Kazimierz Marcinkewicz, Rose became a member of the International
Auschwitz Committee (“Mitglied des Internationalen Auschwitz-Rats”).
16 Although there is no exact equivalent to philosemitism within the Romany discourse per se, it
could be argued that the exaggerated positive statements (since overt ziganism tends to be
socially unacceptable) about Gypsies are manifestly philoziganism.
17 See: “Germany and its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal”, book review at RomNews Network
Community, March 26, 2003. http://www.romnews.com/de According to book reviewer,
“Margalit’s aim [in this book] […] is less to provoke sympathy for the continued suffering of
Romanies, and more to dispute their claims to have been equal victims to the Jews in the
Holocaust. Presented as a study of German attitudes towards Romanies, this book is actually a
contribution to the disheartening literature of ethnic competition for victimhood status”. The
reviewer points to Margalit’s unfounded claim that “despite everything, Gypsies, in contrast to
Jews, were perceived by Himmler…to be part of the German fatherland and not its foe”, p. 53 of
Margalit’s book. Reviewer concludes that regrettably “Margalit’s aim here [from Margalit’s
claim that since Roma “had no contact with the German population, it seems unlikely that the
extermination of the Roma constituted part of the German attempt to protect the racial purity of
the German population”, Margalit p. 48] is to establish a clear difference between the Nazi
treatment of the Romanies, on one hand, and the Jews on the other, making it plain that it was the
latter who were the true victims of Nazis”.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 57
arrival to Germany. The abundance and evident forcefulness of these laws elucidate the
politically, racially, and culturally motivated exclusion of Gypsies from the rest of
German society and Margalit’s emphasis on romantic imagery obscures this fact.
In his book Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland mit besonderer Berücksichtigung
der Zeit zwischen 1918-1945 (The Persecution of Gypsies: 1918-1945), historian
Mohammad Gharaati outlines the persecution of Sinti and Roma in Germany. According
to Gharaati, between the years 1500 and 180018 the German authorities passed 148
antigypsy edicts preventing Sinti and Roma from acquiring permanent residency and
employment (32). Decades before the rise of the Third Reich, German police and various
government ministries enacted laws according to which all Sinti and Roma residing in
Germany were required to register with the police and unemployment agencies in each
district, be fingerprinted and photographed, and have their genealogical data recorded19.
From April to December of 1907, a few years after the establishment of the special
“Gypsy Affairs Agency” (“Nachrichtendienst in Bezug auf die Zigeuner”, 1899) in
Munich under the directorship of the criminal investigator Alfred Dillmann, there were
289 criminal cases filed against Gypsies, the majority of which were for such trivial
offenses as camping or driving a defective car (59). The antiziganistic vehemence
inherent in such laws, as explained in Gharaati’s work, coupled with the general literary
18 In addition to the earliest antigypsy edicts (from 1500 to 1800), the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries reveal intense, politically motivated assimilation policies in both the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and the German lands. Thousands of Gypsy children were forcefully taken
from their parents’ homes and placed into orphanages or non-Gypsy families for the purposes of
reeducation and assimilation. Often the parents were sent to Arbeitshäuser, places of forced labor.
It is not difficult to foresee the devastating consequences of such actions on Romany families and
the generations of unnaturally orphaned Sinti and Roma children. Similarly to the Romany
historian Ian Hancock, a professor of Romany Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, I argue
that such policies were often attempts to destroy Romany language and Sinti and Roma culture.
See: Hancock, Ian. “Chronology”. The Romani Archives and Documentation Center.
http://www.radoc.net Hancock cites the efforts of such assimilation policies in the example of the
Nordhausen authorities (from 1830) asserting that such projects had a goal to “eradicate the
Romani population by removing the children for permanent placement with non-Romani
families”.
19 Despite the terms of Article 108 of the National Constitution of the Weimar Republic (ratified
in 1919 and 1921), which guaranteed Sinti and Roma full and equal citizenship rights,
antiziganism throughout the German-speaking lands was widespread and on the rise in the
beginning of the twentieth century. The similar registration of Jews in Germany was mandatory
during the Third Reich. As non-Sinti and Roma citizens were also required (and still are) to
register upon living and acquiring a new address (Anmeldung and Abmeldung), they were not
fingerprinted, photographed, and their genealogies were not recorded.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 58
descriptions of Gypsies as Tatars, Turkish spies, Egyptians, carriers of the plague, traitors
to Christendom, and invaders in general, speak against Sinti and Roma as the “known
other(s).”20 Gypsies are indeed perceived by the political authorities as “the element(s) of
‘conspiracy’” within German society, notwithstanding that their history in Germany is
over six centuries long. By considering the historical data that Gharaati presents, we see
how Margalit fails to reveal the mendacity inherent in the romanticization of “wandering”
Gypsies.
Based on extensive research of the anti-Gypsy laws21, the persevering
antiziganistic attitudes, and the contemporary literature of the Sinti and Roma political
activists, it is my contention (contrary to Margalit) that most Sinti and Roma “traveled”
in order to comply with the law and out of necessity to find employment. For example, in
his book Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland
22
(The History of
Persecution of Gypsies in Germany), Joachim Hohmann highlights the immensity of anti-
Gypsy laws since Sinti and Roma’s arrival to Germany. These ordinances targeted the
movement and prohibited the settlement of Gypsies. Hohmann concludes that based on
his analysis of the anti-Gypsy laws the image of a free-roaming Gypsy is merely a
20 For the chronology of the depiction of the literary figure “Gypsy”, see Ebhardt Wilhelm’s
dissertation (cited in footnote 10).
21 On February 17th 1906, the Prussian Minister of the Interior (Prussian Law) issued a directive
entitled “Combating the Gypsy Nuisance” (“Die Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens”)
guaranteeing the expulsion of Sinti and Roma from not only Prussia but the surrounding countries
as well. Prussia introduced “Gypsy licenses”, requirements for all Gypsies that would allow them
to stay in the region, but not to settle permanently. On July 16th, 1926, the Bavarian “Law for
Combating Gypsies, Vagabonds and Idlers” (“Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Zigeunern,
Landfahrern und Arbeitsscheuen”) proposed a year earlier at the 1925 conference, was passed.
Firstly, the law reiterated that Gypsies are a different race, secondly that they are by nature
opposed to all work, and thirdly that they should be subjected to forced labor. Pre-Holocaust
Germany targeted Gypsies by law, classifying them as so-called non-Aryans and those seen as
unworthy of living. “The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” was passed
in 1933, making forceful sterilization legal and ordering sterilization of Gypsies, Jews, Germans
of black color, disabled, and alleged asocials. On September 17, 1933, “The National Citizenship
Law” relegated Gypsies and Jews to the status of second-class citizens, and deprived them of
their civil rights. In the same year under the second Nuremberg “Law for Prevention of Blood and
Honor” intermarriage or sexual relationships between Aryans and non-Aryans, including the
Gypsies, was outlawed. The subsequent internment in the concentration camps and Heinrich
Himmler’s signing of the Auschwitz decree on December 16, 1942 authorizing elimination of
Gypsies, resulted in murder of 500,000 Sinti and Roma.
22 Hohmann, Joachim, S. Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland. Frankfurt/New
York: Campus Verlag, 1988.
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cultural construct. “Under these circumstances, that there could have existed an
unrestrained, free-roaming nomadic way of life is out of question” (80)23. While some
Sinti and Roma choose to lead a nomadic lifestyle (as do individuals of other ethnicities
throughout the world), the contention that all Sinti and Roma are inherently nomadic is at
best reductive and at worst racially prejudiced.
The extermination of Sinti and Roma resulting in deaths of more than 500,000
Sinti and Roma could hardly be summarized as “marginal” and “not politically
motivated.”24 It certainly was not due to the lack of antiziganism that the persecution of
Sinti and Roma before and during the Holocaust “did not become a central subject in
post-1945 German political culture until the 1980s.” Contrary to Margalit (and an array
of similar authors), I argue that post-war attitudes towards Sinti and Roma, exemplified
by the absence of a single Sinti and Roma witness at the Nuremberg trial, the fact that no
reparation monies were paid, or the denial, well into the 1980s, of their genocide in the
Holocaust, are centered around the construct “Gypsy”. By supporting the unchanging and
unchallenged nature of this construct, Margalit’s writing furthers this particular
discrimination of Sinti and Roma. Surely, the approach of non-Gypsies towards Gypsies
was adjusted to the spirit of the era, but the belief in the Gypsy essence, and the
prejudiced vision inherent in such a viewpoint, remained the same.
In his analysis of the history of madness, Madness and Civilization
25, Michel
Foucault reminds readers that in order to understand the relationship between the sane
and insane in any given epoch one must begin to examine the silence, what has not been
said about the changing treatment of those labeled as the insane. The belief in a particular
and anomalous essence of the insane, which makes them ontologically different than
those categorized as the sane, supports the further belief in a permanent essence of being,
and in this case, radically different and possibly dangerous. The idea that there could be
23 “Von einem ungebundenen, freien Wanderleben konnte unter diesen Bedingungen keine Rede
sein…” (80).
24 “Antigypsyism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany: A Parallel with
Antisemitism?”, p. 2 (“Racist antigypsyism began in Germany only in the late decades of the
nineteenth century and existed on the margins of racist antisemitism. In contrast to the latter,
however, racist antigypsism had no political character. Furthermore, the racist preoccupation with
the Romanies in Germany, as in England, was not solely negative”; emphasis added).
25 Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization. trans. Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon,
1965. p. 3-37 (especially 6 and 7), 66-7, 211 (fear of madness).
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 60
an irredeemable Gypsy essence, or what Slavoj Žižek terms the “real kernel”26, that could
be qualitatively assessed, led to Sinti and Roma’s extermination in the Holocaust.
In summary, as only some Sinti and Roma identify with “mobility” and non-wage
labor, it is antiziganistic to characterize an entire group as inherently and uniformly
nomadic and communal, particularly due to the generalized, culturally assigned anti-
Gypsy connotations that such descriptions generate. The celebrated Gypsy innocence and
worry-free lifestyle are presumably what makes them Gypsies. They all dance, sing, play
music, and have strong communal relations. The persistence of the belief that all Gypsies
create and remain in close-knit communities has had certain detrimental effects, one
example of which is the common belief in high rates of incest among Gypsies. Certainly
it is not Sinti and Roma’s alleged racial inferiority or general inability that pigeonholes
them in the role of wedding musicians and traveling salesmen. Instead, a revision and
careful evaluation of the autonomy of expression and the necessity of the space for such
exhibition is needed. Often forced to be on the move, Sinti and Roma frequently did not
have access to education or public life in the past. The children of those Sinti and Roma
who would permanently settle in an area faced continued persecution in schools and
communities, and the adult Sinti and Roma were often performing menial services for
those in power and with prominent positions. Pointing to the paradigm and the
predicament of subaltern women, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her article “Can the
Subaltern Speak?”27, asserts that at the crux of the problem is not merely speaking,
having nothing to say or that no accounts of the subject-consciousness of women exist,
but that she is allocated no position of utterance. Appropriating Spivak’s gender-centered
critique, it could be said that by ignoring the efforts and achievements of hundreds of
organizations and people working for the rights of Sinti and Roma, such as European
Roma Rights Center, Roma National Congress, Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, Roma
Section, Union Romani, Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma, Dokumentations-und
Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, Romani Rose, Wilhelm Spindler, Anton
Franz, William Duna, and Ian Hancock, to name a few, authors curtail the impact the
26 Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London and New York: Verso, 1989.
27 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg, eds. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1988. p. 294-297.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 61
Roma advocates have had in exposing biased trends and practices towards Sinti and
Roma.
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Hadziavdic: Images of Gypsies… 61
Roma advocates have had in exposing biased trends and practices towards Sinti and
Roma.
