Executive Struggles in Germany 1870–1909

Abstract

The interior ministry of the German Reich in Berlin provided few guidelines that addressed the Gypsy problem on a national level before World War I; its role was limited mainly to responding to the individual states’ plans for regulating Gypsies within their borders. While there were periodic efforts to create legislation on a national scale, these never met with success in the prewar period. Instead, the development of Gypsy policy took place mostly on a regional level, generally without the participation of legislative bodies, and was centered on the states that had populations of “native” Gypsies (Alsace, Prussia) or states which touched on an international border (Alsace again, Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg). The administrative regulations issued by the regional state authorities were much more specific and detailed than the general guidelines issued from Rome to local prefects in Italy. The regulations separated Gypsies and “those who acted like them” more sharply from the indigent traveling population. In Germany, unlike in Italy, policy grew increasingly focused on removing Gypsies’ claims to German citizenship as well as nationality. As in Italy, those who “behaved like Gypsies” were, by definition, not German, yet Gypsies’ lack of a historical “nation” to refer back to or identify with left them without any definite national status.