Germany and Its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal

6. Effect of Nazism and Denazification on Attitudes toward Gypsies

6 Effect of Nazism and Denazification on Attitudes toward Gypsies attitude of german society toward gypsies after 1945 T he mass murder of Gypsies by the Nazis did not lead to any substantial change in attitudes toward them by ordinary Germans after 1945. Nor were the Allies’ military governments particularly interested in the attitude of the German population toward Gypsies. The denazification policy they established concentrated mainly on uprooting antisemitism and racism in general from public discourse, and it did not deal specifically with the antigypsyism that was then prevalent in Germany . The explicit failure on the part of the Allied military governments in occupied Germany to refer to the Gypsy persecution in the crucial years when the new political culture was being consolidated in Germany contributed to the fact that persecution of Gypsies, in contrast to the Jewish Holocaust, was not perceived by the German public as a political issue. While the attitude toward Jews became a central criterion for measuring the state of democracy in the FRG,1 the question of attitudes toward the Gypsies remained in the margins. Only gradually, from the late 1950s on, did recognition of the Gypsy as a victim of Nazism begin to penetrate the consciousness of the enlightened strata in Germany, and only then did the victim motif become a part of the Gypsy image. Meanwhile, antigypsyism and the romanticizing of Gypsies, with their varied layers, continued 143 Germany and Its Gypsies to exist. The most salient expressions of Gypsy romanticization in German popular culture during the 1950s and 1960s were pictures of Gypsy women dressed in a Spanish style and communicating eroticism, which were sold in the picture departments of large department stores and were even named by the public after one of them, “Die Karstadtzigeunerin.” These pictures were particularly popular with the lower middle class, which used them to decorate their apartments. Also, Günter Grass hints at this phenomenon in his novel The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), as he describes the artist Kuchen, who “was from the successful and wellsold Gypsy period” and whose only motif was the “black Gypsy.”2 One of the most popular and successful musical hits in the FRG in 1967 was the song “Gypsy Boy” (“Zigeunerjunge”), as recorded by Alexandra (Doris Treitz-Nefedov). This song concentrated all the romantic motifs and stereotypes associated with Gypsies, which, along with its sentimental tune, contributed to its popularity. The Gypsies are described in this song in a nostalgic manner, according to the traditional romantic stereotypes, as happy, colorful, figures, who play, laugh, and dance around the bonfire at night. The song brings in the first person a story about a woman who, as a girl, fell in love with a young Gypsy who had come to town with a Gypsy caravan. The song ends by her discovering after a few days that the Gypsies left town. Zigeunerjunge, Zigeunerjunge Wo bist Du, Wo sind eure Wagen, Doch es blieb alles leer Und Mein Herz wurde schwer.3 [Gypsy boy, Gypsy boy Where are you, Where are your wagons, Yet everything remained empty And my heart broke.] With these lines, songwriter Hans Blum aimed to express a disappointed childhood love. There was certainly no hint of this romantic longing at Auschwitz. Romantic motifs also appeared in German film adaptations of Gypsy musicals in the 1950s, and some scenes in films of the 1970s also included Gypsy figures such as The Girl from Hof (Das Mädchen vom Hof ) and The Large Flutter (Die grosse Flatter).4 However, both the traditional romantic motifs and the antigypsy motifs remained. The old stereotypes were sometimes updated to fit in with the period, but they did not change in substance. The only limits placed were on blatant antigypsy expressions that were associated with the Nazi murder. An article in the Frankfurter Rundschau dealt with the Gypsies: “Today they no longer engage in the horse trade, but nevertheless they 144 Effect of Nazism and Denazification on Attitudes toward Gypsies Typical Gypsy woman, the so-called Karstadtzigeunerin. have stayed in horse power; namely, they frequently appear as dealers of used cars and go on behaving according to their motto, ‘Make new of the old,’ as in the past, when they dealt with horses, when a limping worthless horse would within a few hours become full of energy.”5 There is still evidence that blatant antigypsy attitudes, similar to...