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  *  
    1Name
  *  
    2Germany
  *  
    3Switzerland
  *  
    4Yenish organisations
  *  
    5Film and television
  *  
    6Notable people
  *  
    7References
  *  
    8External links

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Yenish people

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Semi-nomadic people in Western Europe
[300px-Jenische1928e]Yenish at Lake Lauerz, Schwyz, Switzerland, 1928
[220px-Jenische_um1890_Muotatha]Two Yenish in Muotathal, Switzerland,
c. 1890 [220px-Jenische_D]Geographic distribution of the Yenish (2007
upload, unreferenced)^[unreliable source?]
[220px-Flag_of_Yeniche_people]Flag

The Yenish (German: Jenische; French: Yeniche) are an itinerant group
in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centred on the
Rhineland. A number of theories for the group's origins have been
proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the
marginalized and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern
period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th
century.^[1] Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the
mid-19th to 20th centuries.

Name[edit]

The Yenish people as a distinct group, as opposed to the generic
class of vagrants of the early modern period, emerged towards the end
of the 18th century. The adjective jenisch is first recorded in the
early 18th century in the sense of "cant, argot".^[2] A
self-designation Jauner is recorded in 1793.^[3] Jenisch remains
strictly an adjective that refers to the language, not the people,
until the first half of the 19th century. Jean Paul (1801) glosses
janische Sprache ("Yenish language") with so nennt man in Schwaben
die aus fast allen Sprachen zusammengeschleppte Spitzbubensprache
("this is the term used in Swabia for an argot used by young rogues
which has been cobbled together from all sorts of languages").^[4] An
anonymous author in 1810 argues that Jauner is a deprecating term,
equivalent to "cardsharp", and that the proper designation for the
people should be jenische Gasche.^[5]

Germany[edit]

Many Yenish people in Germany became sedentary in the second half of
the 19th century. The Kingdom of Prussia in 1842 introduced a law
forcing municipalities to provide social welfare to permanent
residents without citizenship. As a consequence, there were attempts
to prevent Yenish people from taking permanent residence.^[6]
Recently established settlements of Yenish, Sinti, and Roma, dubbed
"gypsy colonies" (Zigeunerkolonien), were discouraged and attempts
were made to incite the settlers to move away, in the form of various
forms of harassment, and in some cases physical attacks.^[7] By the
late 19th century, many recently sedentary Yenish were nevertheless
integrated into local populations, gradually moving away from their
tradition of endogamy thus being absorbed into the general German
population. Those Yenish who did not become sedentary by the late
19th century took to living in trailers.

The persecution of Romani people under Nazi Germany beginning in 1933
was directed not exclusively against the Romani people but also
targeted "vagrants who travel around after the manner of the gypsies"
(nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Landfahrer), which included the
Yenish and people without permanent residence in general. ^[8]
Travellers were scheduled for internment in Buchenwald, Dachau,
Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme.^[9] Yenish families began to be
registered in a Landfahrersippenarchiv ("archive of travelling
families"), but this effort was incomplete by the end of World War
II.^[10] It appears that only very limited numbers of Yenish
(compared with the number of Romani victims) were actually deported:
five Yenish individuals are on record as having been deported from
Cologne,^[11] and a total of 279 woonwagenbewoners ('caravan
dwellers') are known to have been deported from the Netherlands in
1944.^[12] Lewy (2001) has discovered one case of the deportation of
a Yenish woman in 1939.^[13] The Yenish people are mentioned as a
persecuted group in the text of the 2012 Memorial to the Sinti and
Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin.^[14]

Switzerland[edit]

In 2001, Swiss National Councillor Remo Galli as speaker of the
foundation "Zukunft fur Schweizer Fahrende" reported an estimate of
35,000 "travellers" (Fahrende, a term combining Sinti, Roma and
Yenish), both sedentary and non-sedentary, in Switzerland, among them
an estimated 20,000 Yenish people.^[15]

From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a
semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents and having
their children adopted by members of the sedentary Swiss population.
The name of this program was Kinder der Landstrasse ("Children of the
Road"). What was ostensibly intended as a charitable effort to remove
children from what was perceived as precarious conditions in a
criminal milieu of homelessness and vagrancy was later criticized as
a violation of the fundamental rights of the Yenishe to family life,
with children separated from parents by force without due criminal
procedure, and resulting in many of the children suffering an ordeal
of successive foster homes and orphanages.^[16] In all, 590 children
were taken from their parents and institutionalized in orphanages,
mental institutions, and even prisons. Child removals peaked in the
1930s to 1940s, in the years leading up to and during World War II.
After public criticism in 1972, the program was discontinued in 1973.
^[17]

An organisation for the political representation of travellers
(Yenish as well as Sinti and Roma) was founded in 1975, named
Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse ("Wheel Cooperative of the Road").
The Swiss federal authorities have officially recognized the "Swiss
Yenish and Sinti" as a "national minority".^[18] With the
ratification of the European language charter in 1997, Switzerland
has given the status of a "territorial non-tied language" to the
Yenish language.

Yenish organisations[edit]

  * Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse (Switzerland)
  * Jenischer Kulturverband (Austria)
  * Jenischer Bund in Deutschland und Europa (Germany)
  * Woonwagenbelangen Nederland. (Netherlands)

Film and television[edit]

  * 1957: Es geschah am hellichten Tag
  * 1979: Das gefrorene Herz
  * 1992: Kinder der Landstrasse
  * 2008: Hunkeler macht Sachen
  * 2016: Fog in August based on the 2008 book Fog in August
  * 2017: Dove cadono le ombre
  * 2023: RUACH - EINE REISE INS JENISCHE EUROPA

Notable people[edit]

  * Mariella Mehr (1947-2022), notable for documenting the plight she
    suffered under the Kinder der Landstrasse project in the 1970s,
    contributing to its discontinuation
  * Stephan Eicher (b. 1960), Swiss musician, Yenish on his father's
    side
  * Oliver Kayser [lb], Luxembourgish musician and variete performer
  * Rafael van der Vaart (b. 1983), footballer

References[edit]

 1. ^ See e.g.:
      + Leo Lucassen: "A Blind Spot: Migratory and Travelling Groups
        in Western European Historiography". In: International Review
        of Social History 38 (1993), 209-23.
      + Leo Lucassen, Wim Willems, Annemarie Cottaar: Gypsies and
        Other Itinerant Groups: A Socio-Historical Approach. London
        u.a. 1998.
      + Wolfgang Seidenspinner: "Herrenloses Gesindel. Armut und
        vagierende Unterschichten im 18. Jahrhundert". In:
        Zeitschrift fur die Geschichte des Oberrheins, 133 (1985),
        381-386.
      + Wolfgang Seidenspinner: "Jenische. Zur Archaologie einer
        verdrangten Kultur". In: Beitrage zur Volkskunde in
        Baden-Wurttemberg, 8 (1993), 63-95.
 2. ^ The 1714 reference refers to the Rotwelsch cant, not its
    speakers, with no implication of an itinerant lifestyle.
    Friedrich Kluge: Rotwelsch. Quellen und Wortschatz der
    Gaunersprache und der verwandten Geheimsprachen. Strassburg 1901
    (reprinted 1987), 175f.
 3. ^ Jauner is reported as a Rotwelsch term for vagrants in Swabia.
    Johann Ulrich Scholl, Abriss des Jauner- und Bettelwesens in
    Schwaben nach Akten und andern sichern Quellen von dem Verfasser
    des Konstanzer Hans. Stuttgart 1793. The author of the 1793 work
    identifies the vagrant populations of criminals as a recent
    phenomenon, originally due to vagrant soldiers in the Thirty
    Years' War and reinforced by later wars.
 4. ^ Jean Paul, Komischer Anhang zum Titan (1801), p. 108.
 5. ^ Anonymous, "Die Jauner-Sprache", in: Der Erzahler, Nr. 34 (24
    August 1810), 157f., Gasche is itself a Rotwelsch term, derived
    from the Romani term gadze "non-gypsies". Yaron Matras, "The
    Romani element in German secret languages: Jenisch and Rotwelsch"
    in Matras (ed.), The Romani Element in Non-Standard Speech.
    Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (1998), 193-230.
 6. ^ Verordnung uber die Aufnahme neu anziehender Personen vom 31.
    Dezember 1842, Neue Sammlung, 6. Abt., S. 253-254; Verordnung
    uber die Verpflichtung zur Armenpflege vom 31. Dezember 1842,
    ebenda, S. 255-258; Verordnung uber Erwerbung und Verlust der
    Eigenschaft als Preussischer Untertan vom 31. Dezember 1842, in:
    ebenda, 259-261.
 7. ^ Ulrich Opfermann: ,,Mackeser". Zur Geschichte der Fahrenden im
    Oberbergischen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert; in: Beitrage zur
    Oberbergischen Geschichte, Bd. 5, Gummersbach 1995; 116-128.
 8. ^ Wolfgang Ayass, "Gemeinschaftsfremde". Quellen zur Verfolgung
    von "Asozialen" 1933-1945, Koblenz 1998, Nr. 50.
 9. ^ Ulrich Opfermann: Die Jenischen und andere Fahrende. Eine
    Minderheit begrundet sich. In: Jahrbuch fur
    Antisemitismusforschung. 19 (2010), 126-150 (148-150).
10. ^ Zimmermann, Michael, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die
    nationalsozialistische ,,Losung der Zigeunerfrage", Hamburg 1996,
    S. 153, S. 436. Ulrich Opfermann: Die Jenischen und andere
    Fahrende. Eine Minderheit begrundet sich, in: Jahrbuch fur
    Antisemitismusforschung 19 (2010), S. 126-150; ders., Rezension
    zu: Andrew d'Arcangelis, Die Jenischen - verfolgt im NS-Staat
    1934-1944. Eine sozio-linguistische und historische Studie,
    Hamburg 2006, in: Historische Literatur, Bd. 6, 2008, H. 2, S.
    165-168,
11. ^ Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die
    nationalsozialistische ,,Losung der Zigeunerfrage", Hamburg 1996,
    174; Karola Fings/Frank Sparing, Rassismus - Lager - Volkermord.
    Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung in Koln, Koln 2005,
    211.
12. ^ Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die
    nationalsozialistische ,,Losung der Zigeunerfrage", Hamburg 1996,
    314.
13. ^ Guenther Lewy, ,,Ruckkehr unerwunscht". Die Verfolgung der
    Zigeuner im Dritten Reich, Munchen/Berlin 2001, 433.
14. ^ Vollstandiger Text auf den Informationstafeln des Denkmals,
    Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma,
    Pressemappe, S. 16-20, pdf
15. ^ Rahmenkredit Stiftung ,,Zukunft fur Schweizer Fahrende", in:
    Nationalrat, Sommersession 2001, Sechste Sitzung, 11. Juni 2001.
    [1]. Mehr (1979) already claimed "about 20,000 Yenish", among
    them only "a handful of families who are still travelling" ("eine
    Handvoll Sippen, die noch reisen wurden", Mariella Mehr: Jene,
    die auf nirgends verbriefte Rechte pochen. In: Tilman Zulch
    (ed.), Freimut Duve: In Auschwitz vergast, bis heute verfolgt.
    Zur Situation der Roma (Zigeuner) in Deutschland und Europa.
    Reinbek 1979, 274-287 (276f.)
16. ^ Thomas Huonker, Regula Ludi, Roma, Sinti und Jenische.
    Schweizerische Zigeunerpolitik zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.
    Beitrag zur Forschung, Veroffentlichungen der UEK, Band 23 (2001)
    (abstract).
17. ^ Le Temps (Geneva), December 12, 2007, "Le passe enfin ecrit des
    enfants enleves en Suisse", an historical study spanning the
    years from 1926 to 1973.
18. ^ Since autumn 2016, the Swiss federal authorities officially
    declare: "With the ratification of the Framework Convention of
    the Council of Europe of 1 February 1995 on the Protection of
    National Minorities, Switzerland has recognized the Swiss Yenish
    and Sinti as a national minority--regardless of whether they live
    travelling or sedentary."^[citation needed]

External links[edit]

  * # Media related to Yenish at Wikimedia Commons

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