Central Europe Yearbook

Roma & Sinti Culture as Modern German Studies

Arushi Nair

Keywords: Roma and Sinti, poetry, Dotschy Reinhardt, Modern German Studies

Abstract

How can we spotlight the second generation of Roma & Sinti in the German speaking world? When the Roma are discussed or invited to speak, it is typically limited to their experience with the atrocities of World War Two, and so their voices become narrowly contextualized before the backdrop of a history of persecution, especially during the Holocaust. Seldom is the attention on their culture and their own history. In a shift to focus on the art, poetry and literature of the Roma, I am hoping to empower the voices within the second generation, all those born in an era disconnected from the war. I argue  that these perspectives are invaluable to the discipline of German Studies and that there is much more to this group than the discrimination and pain they have faced. Although the injustices of past and present have indeed been formative in the lives of so many Roma & Sinti, it limits the scope of what we know and can learn from them. 

In order to approach these questions, I will analyze and discuss a memoir and poems by a Sinteza author, musician and rights activist named  Dotschy Reinhardt. Born in 1975, Reinhardt has used her voice in many ways to speak about her identity and represent her culture beyond the scope of the war. In her memoir she explores the distinctions between Sinti and Roma, her ambitions, and her connection to generations of Roma artists. She tells a new story, a different story that opens up a very different perspective from the view provided by scholarship on the Roma and Sinti. In her poems, she  grapples with a continued struggle to find her own voice, like so many others in her generation interested in recovering an identity which doesn’t get served to them on a silver platter. The intended outcome of my project is  to rediscover that lost voice of the Roma and Sinti and make widely available what it is saying.