Project Details
Projekt
Transformations of police antigypsyist discourse: from the "racial" paradigm to genocidal practice (1850-1950)
Applicant
Dr. Frank Reuter
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463005852
The subproject aims to reconstruct the process by which the primarily sociographic understanding of the "gypsy" transformed into a "racial-biological" concept: both on the scientific-theoretical level of criminological and eugenic discourse and in police practice. By means of a discourse analysis focused on the history of science, the transfer of knowledge between different actors will be examined. In addition to the transformations of the "gypsy" construct, the triangulation between self-representation of the majority society, antigypsyism and Othering discourses will be analyzed; this applies primarily to entanglements with colonial racism and anti-Semitism. The transnational discourse and correspondence network that produced knowledge about Sinti and Roma will be presented for the first time in its genesis, which is characterized by manifold interconnections. The starting point of the research will be the personnel of the Racial Hygiene Research Centre (founded in 1936). In which scientific or epistemic communities were the researchers socialized? The central question is whether there was a personal or ideational connection to those actors who were decisively responsible for the implementation of "racial-biological" semantics at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In addition, as part of the intended analysis of the discourse and correspondence network, the role of women will be elaborated in a gender-historically differentiated way. The significance of the "racial" definition of the "gypsy" in National Socialism and its ambivalences will be located within the socio-political reorganization of Europe as it was intended by the Nazi state, and questions will be asked about the interpretive sovereignty of "race experts" who were involved in investigations as well as in developing deportation and extermination measures of different groups. What will be examined more closely is the influence that the "racial-biological" "gypsy" concept had on the export of genocidal violence to the border regions annexed by Germany, also in view of the transfer of personnel, practices and knowledge. The focus of the subproject is on the history of the perpetrators and the history of science. Nevertheless, social-historical approaches will also be used to consider how those affected by the stigmatizing exonym used their agency to develop strategies of resistance against persecution practices and attributions of alterity. Using the example of selected spaces of interaction, as far as the sources allow, the diversity of lifestyles will be made visible, which in turn will allow a differentiated picture of Sinti and Roma way beyond stereotypical attributions.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Co-Investigator
Professorin Dr. Tanja Penter
