The Gypsy Scourge! - Collegium Carolinum

The Gypsy Scourge! - Collegium Carolinum

Pavel Baloun
[email protected]
Charles University, Prague, Faculty of Humanities, Department of General Anthropology
“The Gypsy Scourge!”
On 14 July 1927, the Parliament of the First Czechoslovak Republic passed the Act No.
117/1927 on Wandering Gypsies and Other Itinerants. It was a legal norm with roots in
the former Austrian-Hungarian legal system and it dealt mostly with vagabonds or beggars. France had similar law on groups leading a nomadic way of life (1912), as well as
Bavaria with its law on “gypsies” and “workshy people” (1926). An accurate police registration of some groups of people, who were defined by general terms “wandering Gypsies” and “other itinerants”, was supposed to be an important element of the law. A more
precise definition of these terms was deliberately transferred to lower state organs which
were given a great opportunity to carry out the law.
The main objective of my research project is to reconstruct the way in which particular
state authorities – both central and local – implemented the law. The key question is what
role was assigned to the category of race in the process of defining the group. Attention is
paid to other categories and discourses (even seemingly) important to implementation of
the law – e.g. hygiene, public health, work, criminality, youth care.
The 1927 law was not the only measure aimed at the Roma population in interwar
Czechoslovakia. The same year, a specialised “gypsy school” for Roma children was
established in Uzhhorod, Carpathian Ruthenia. Although the Czechoslovak authorities
claimed that it was a unique experiment whose aim was to civilise members of allegedly
underdeveloped “Gypsy” community and to turn them into fully-fledged Czechoslovak
citizens, “gypsy schools” based on the Uzhhorod model soon began to arise around Eastern Slovakia. In my research, I will not settle only for the topic of implementation of the
restrictive 1927 law. I will try to provide the context of nascent Roma assimilation policies.
The next research objective is to go beyond the era of the “First” Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938). I want to describe continuities and discontinuities at the level of the
1927 law and assimilation policies and even go further to following political regimes: the
Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938-1939) and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1940).
State of Research
The current research of anti-Gypsy measures in interwar Czechoslovakia has been focused
on the creation and passing of the 1927 law itself. The actual implementation of the law
remains the subject of dispute. The central discussion revolves around the importance of
race as a category while defining the group constituted by the law: “wandering Gypsies
and other itinerants”. The greater part of publications, using sources from the central
authorities, states that race (or racism), played a secondary role because the target group of
20. Münchner Bohemisten-Treffen, 4. März 2016 — Exposé Nr. 25
Creation and Implementation of Anti-Gypsy Measures
in Czechoslovakia Between 1918 and 1940
Baloun, Pavel: “The Gypsy Scourge!”
citizens was defined differently, by their way of life and livelihood: vagrancy, beggary,
avoidance of work, theft. Some researchers managed to discover, exploring limited local
sources, that even though the group was formally defined by its way of life, the law implementation was hugely influenced by racial criteria.
Other publications dealing with the law are primarily focused on the Romani Holocaust. In this case, the existence of the law proofs that antiziganist measures had a longterm character not only in Germany, but also in Czechoslovakia. The emphasis on political
milestones, i.e. years 1938 and 1939, results in the fact that possible continuities of the law
implementation are never questioned. The existence of concentration camps in Lety by
Písek and Hodonín by Kunštát is therefore attributed to the Nazi occupation.
Geopolitical contexts of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia are usually left out. They
are mentioned only in connection with some exceptional events: the foundation of the first
“gypsy school” or the case of alleged cannibalism in Moldava nad Bodvou.
Concept
My approach to the Law on Wandering Gypsies from 1927 is based on the theory by
Giorgio Agamben; I consider it a specific form of the state of exception. The law allowed
to mistreat a relatively vaguely defined group of people regardless of constitutional and
international principles of the Czechoslovak state. In the next step, I will question the role
of race as a category for defining this particular group of people. While most of the Czech
researchers distinguishes between cultural and racist (biological) definitions of “wandering Gypsies”, French philosopher Étienne Balibar points out the fact that not only biological categories (e.g. racial origin) can be naturalised; we can apply this approach also to
cultural and social categories (e.g. a way of life).
In my analysis of the law implementation I will focus on how a definition of “wandering Gypsy” varies depending on a geopolitical space and a local context it emerges from.
I will pay attention to the fact that a lot of “settled Gypsies” lived in many parts of
Czechoslovakia – especially Moravia, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. They were supposed to be excepted from the law, at least formally. What are the types of state policies
dealing with “settled Gypsies” or “Gypsies” from Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia in
comparison to “wandering Gypsies”? I will compare results from different contemporary
regions (Písek in Bohemia, Hodonín in Moravia, Košice in Slovakia).
The implementation of the 1927 law will be reconstructed based on sources from the
central state institutions – e.g. ministries, official central bodies of security forces (the National Archives, the Czech Police Museum) and local authorities, including courts. District
and regional courts were the ones that decided in favour of “security confinement” and
placement of “wandering Gypsies” to institutions for forced labour.
At the local level, I will limit the sources to three locations. I chose them because of
their connection to specific cases and events with available sources (according to the literature): Písek District (the State District Archives Písek), Hodonín District (the State District Archives Hodonín) and Košice District (the State Archives Košice).
At the regional level, I am mostly interested in sources from Zemský úřad v Praze and
Zemský trestní soud v Praze (available at the National Archives and the State Regional
Archives in Prague), Zemský úřad v Brně and Zemský trestní soud v Brně (the Moravian
Provincial Archives in Brno), Ministerstvo s plnou mocou pre správu Slovenska and Krajinský úřad v Bratislavě (the Slovak National Archives, the State Archives Bratislava) and
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Baloun, Pavel: “The Gypsy Scourge!”
Zemský úřad pro zemi podkarpatoruskou (the State Regional Archives of Transcarpathian
Region Uzhhorod, Division Berehovo).
Other sources include handbooks for police officers, textbooks and criminology publications, criminology journals for gendarmerie officers and non-uniformed policemen
(Bezpečnostní služba or Československý detektiv), scientific anthropological and pedagogical journals (Anthropologie, Úchylná mládež etc.).
Current status of the project
At the moment, I am focusing on three topics. Firstly, it is an analysis of the contemporary
Czechoslovak criminology journals (Bezpečnostní služba, Československý detektiv, Bratrství etc.) or police handbooks and the way “gypsies” are reflected in these materials.
This research will result in a study that I will offer to a Czech or foreign journal (e.g. Soudobé dějiny, Dějiny–Teorie–Kritika or Bohemia), no later than during the spring of 2016.
Secondly, I am covering the topic of gypsy schools and gypsy classes and their establishment in interwar Czechoslovakia, their relationship with nascent assimilation policies
and the 1927 law on wandering Gypsies. In 2015, I participated in the international conference Beyond East and West. Decolonizing Modernization in Telciu, Romania with my
paper Civilising the Gypsy Child: “Gypsy School” as a Colonial Practice in Interwar
Czechoslovakia (1918-1938). The extended version of the paper will be published during
2016 in the thematic issue of a foreign journal.
Thirdly, in 2015, I researched central archives in Prague (the President's Office
Archives and the National Archives) and I started to explore the local archives in Písek
District (the State District Archives Písek).
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