Yenish people

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File:Jenische Dörfer und Lebensräume in Europa.png

Geographic distribution of the Yenish (2007 upload, unreferenced)Template:Unreliable source?

File:Jenische1928e.jpg

Yenish at Lake Lauerz, Schwyz, Switzerland, 1928

The Yenish (Template:Langx; Template:Langx, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,Template:Sfn Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centered on the Rhineland. The origins of the Yenish are unknown, though a number of theories for the group's origins have been proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the marginalised and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th century. Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the mid-19th to 20th centuries.

Name

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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is first recorded in the early 18th century in the sense of "cant, argot".Template:Efn A self-designation {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is recorded in 1793.Template:Efn {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} remained strictly an adjective that refers to the language, not the people, until the first half of the 19th century. Jean Paul (1801) glosses {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Yenish language") with "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" ("this is the term used in Swabia for an argot used by rogues which has been cobbled together from all sorts of languages").<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> An anonymous author in 1810 argues that {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is a deprecating term, equivalent to card sharp, and that the proper designation for the people should be "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" being a slang word derived from the Romani term for "non-Romani".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

History

The origins of the Yenish are unknown, though a number of theories for the group's origins have been proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the marginalised and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th century.<ref>Template:Bulleted list</ref>

Linguist Yaron Matras and anthropologist Rémy Welschinger have identified a history where Yenish communities absorbed members of other itinerant and marganilised communities who left those communities for various reasons over the centuries, including Romani and Jewish individuals.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Pn<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Pn

Germany

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.<ref>Verordnung über die Aufnahme neu anziehender Personen vom 31. Dezember 1842, Neue Sammlung, 6. Abt., S. 253–254; Verordnung über die Verpflichtung zur Armenpflege vom 31. Dezember 1842, ebenda, S. 255–258; Verordnung über Erwerbung und Verlust der Eigenschaft als Preußischer Untertan vom 31. Dezember 1842, in: ebenda, 259–261.</ref> Recently established settlements of Yenish, Sinti, and Roma, dubbed "gypsy colonies" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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" ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}"), which included the Yenish and people without permanent residence in general.<ref>Wolfgang Ayaß, "Gemeinschaftsfremde". Quellen zur Verfolgung von "Asozialen" 1933–1945, Koblenz 1998, Nr. 50.</ref>Template:Sfn Travellers were scheduled for internment in Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Yenish families began to be registered in a {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ('archive of travelling families'), but this effort was incomplete by the end of World War II.<ref>Zimmermann, Michael, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, S. 153, S. 436. Ulrich Opfermann: Die Jenischen und andere Fahrende. Eine Minderheit begründet sich, in: Jahrbuch für 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,</ref> 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,<ref>Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, 174; Karola Fings/Frank Sparing, Rassismus – Lager – Völkermord. Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung in Köln, Köln 2005, 211.</ref> and a total of 279 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ('caravan dwellers') are known to have been deported from the Netherlands in 1944.<ref>Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, 314.</ref> Lewy (2001) has discovered one case of the deportation of a Yenish woman in 1939.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="mahnmal">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Switzerland

In 2001, Swiss National Councillor Remo Galli, as speaker of the foundation {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, reported an estimate of 35,000 "travellers" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a term combining Sinti, Roma and Yenish), both sedentary and non-sedentary, in Switzerland, among them an estimated 20,000 Yenish people.<ref>Rahmenkredit Stiftung „Zukunft für Schweizer Fahrende“, in: Nationalrat, Sommersession 2001, Sechste Sitzung, 11. Juni 2001. [1]</ref> Mariella Mehr had already claimed in 1979 that there were "about 20,000 Yenish", among whom only "a handful of families who are still travelling".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents as mentally ill and having their children adopted by members of the sedentary Swiss population. The name of this program was {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ('Children of the Road'). The separation of children was justified as the Yenish being 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.<ref>Template:Cite report</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news, an historical study spanning the years from 1926 to 1973.</ref> In February 2025, the Swiss government formally acknowledged that the forced removals and assimilation efforts targeting the Yenish, Manouche, and Sinti people under the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} program constitute a crime against humanity under international law.<ref>https://www.admin.ch/gov/fr/accueil/documentation/communiques.msg-id-104226.html</ref>

An organisation for the political representation of travellers (Yenish as well as Sinti and Roma) was founded in 1975, named {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Wheel Cooperative of the Road"). The Swiss federal authorities have officially recognized the "Swiss Yenish and Sinti" as a "national minority".Template:Efn 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.

Austria

Around 1800, a group of Yenish settled in Loosdorf near Melk, and since then a language island of Yenish has existed there.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In November 2021, on the initiative of linguist Heidi Schleich and now chairman Marco Buckovez, the association {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Yenish in Austria)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> was founded with headquarters in Innsbruck. As part of a meeting with the ethnic group spokespersons of the parliamentary parties, the association submitted a request for recognition in accordance with the Ethnic Groups Act on 23 March 2022.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

France

While there are references to Yenish people in France, there are no reported figures.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Template:Ill wrote in a 1991 article in the journal {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} that the Yenish "probably form the largest group of travellers in France today".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Yenish organisations

• {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Switzerland)
• {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Austria)
• {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Germany)
• {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Netherlands)

Film and television

• 1957: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 1979: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 1992: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 2008: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 2016: Fog in August based on the 2008 book of the same name
• 2017: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 2023: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}
• 2023: Lubo

Notable people

• Mariella Mehr (1947–2022), notable for documenting the plight she suffered under the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} project in the 1970s, contributing to its discontinuation
• Stephan Eicher (b. 1960), Swiss musician, Yenish on his father's side
• Template:Ill, Luxembourgish musician and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} performer
• Rafael van der Vaart (b. 1983), Dutch footballer
• Pierre Bodein (b. 1947), French spree killer

See also

• {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}

References

Works cited

• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite journal

Further reading

• Template:Cite book

External links

• Template:Commons category-inline