Transformations of the police antiziganist discourse: from the ‘racial’ paradigm to genocidal practice (1850-1950)

Summary

  1. The sub-project aims to provide fundamental new insights into the transformation process from a primarily sociographical understanding of Gypsies to a ‘racial-biological’ concept between 1850 and 1950 and to work out the entanglements of antiziganism, antisemitism and colonial racism.
  2. For the first time, the transnational network of discourse and correspondence that produced knowledge about Sinti*zze and Rom*nja will be presented in its genesis, which was characterised by diverse interdependencies. A special focus will be placed on criminology and medicine; gender-historical approaches will also be taken into account.
  3. The project will provide information about the agency of members of the minority and reveal forms of their self-assertion - a perspective that has so far received little attention in historical antiziganism research.

Research questions

1.       What role did science play in the racist production of knowledge about Sinti*zze and Rom*nja? To what extent can links to other strands of discourse such as popular culture be identified? What were the consequences for the practice of state persecution?

2.       How did the transnational transfer of knowledge, people and practices take place? What was its significance for the Nazi genocide of Sinti*zze and Rom*nja in Europe?

3.       What reciprocal relationships between the majority society's conceptions of itself, antiziganism and other Othering discourses (anti-Semitism, colonial racism) can be empirically established? To what extent did representations of others have an impact on self-articulations?

Cooperations

with other projects: The subject-specific discourse and the associated practice of state persecution will be localised in contrast to other discourse strands (ethnology, popular culture/visual culture, literature) and mutual influences will be examined. Self-articulations of those affected against discriminatory external representations and practices will be examined. In this way, references to "Zigeunerkunde" (SP 4) and to the secret service surveillance of political Roma activities (SP 5) can be established and tensions between emancipation efforts in interwar journalism (SP 5) and the arts (SP 1, SP 2, SP 3) can be analysed.

with other institutions: Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Fritz Bauer Institute, Central European University (Department of History, Department of Gender Studies), Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, German Historical Institute Washington

Conference 2: ‘Self-articulation and European Persecution History’ in Heidelberg, organised by SP 5 (Patrut) and SP 6 (Penter/Reuter) in cooperation with the Mercator Fellow (Bogdal).

Research areas

Core research area: German Reich

Additional area: Austria, Alsace, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Aims

AIM 1 - Archival inventory and analysis of the scientific discourse (especially criminology and eugenics) as well as the official measures directed against Gypsies in differentiation and interrelation with other Othering discourses (antisemitism, colonial racism).

AIM 2 - To reconstruct the definition of Gypsies in the Nazi state and the resulting practices of exclusion, selection and deportation in the German Reich and its border regions.

AIM 3 - Determining the socio-economic situation of Sinti*zze and Rom*nja beyond the stereotypes.

Picture sources:

Image 1: https://www.sintiundroma.org/de/set/021220/?id=144&z=17 (Moravský zemský archiv, Brno)

Image 2: https://www.sintiundroma.org/de/set/010229/?id=23&z=4 (Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg)

Image 3: https://www.sintiundroma.org/de/set/020401/?id=120&z=1 (Federal Archives, Image R 165 Image-244-64)

Sub-project manager

Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter

University of Heidelberg

Antiziganism Research Centre

Professor of Eastern European History

Further information on the university website

Dr. Frank Reuter

University of Heidelberg

Antiziganism Research Centre

Scientific Managing Director

Further information on the university website