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- Title
NEPRILAGOJENI IN NEVARNI CIGANI: IZSEK IZ ZGODOVINE KONTAMINACIJE, GNUSA IN PREZIRA V 18. IN 19. STOLETJU.
- Authors
STUDEN, Andrej
- Abstract
The image of Gypsies in the 18th and 19th century was exceedingly negative. "Civilised" Europeans constantly tried to distance themselves from these wild and despised people. The European "cultured man" was supposedly all that the Gypsies were not. To distance oneself from the Gypsies allegedly emphasised the basic civilisational difference, their lack of culture, moral depravity and destructive hatred towards civilisation. Stories about Gypsies are actually stories of despise. Europeans pushed them into a world of "the Other", persecuted their "wild" way of life, excluded and stigmatised them. They saw them as a maladjusted, filthy rabble of parasites, idlers, criminals, thieves, swindlers, beggars and vagrants. According to Grellmann (1787), supposedly "these people have been known as robbers and criminals ever since they have first appeared in Europe; therefore we do not only feel aversion and disgust towards them, but also hatred." With their presence the abnormal Gypsies supposedly infected the political, social and moral order. Morals, behaviour and habits, state system and religion of other people were allegedly incomprehensible to the Gypsies, whose nature was seen as "completely different from any cultured man". Virtuous bourgeoisie reproached them with being dirty, uncultured, and foul. Thus they were loathed and despised. As disgusting and unwanted intruders they were seen as contaminating the normal, civilised society, its culture, morality, order, laws and regulations, norms and customs, values and ideals. Even in case of illness the Gypsies would purportedly refuse to give up their free way of life and thievery. With their nomadic way of life and the inherent aspiration for stealing and begging they allegedly transmitted infectious diseases. So the "upstanding" Europeans saw them as dangerous, because they compared them with migratory birds, spreading all kinds of diseases during their travels. In the end of the 19th century Hans Gross, father of modern criminology, argued that the Gypsies' inherent inclination towards theft stemmed from their thousand-year-long habit of living on account of others. He advocated the idea of a radical separation between the culturally-evolved "respectable" Europeans and the Gypsies. At a certain point in the past their paths supposedly diverged. While the first group invested all of its efforts into cultural, social and metaphysical progress, Gypsies only stuck to their parasitic habits. This specific evolution also gave them an important and decisive advantage in comparison with "ordinary" criminals. Furthermore, the Gypsies supposedly had an excruciatingly repulsive, unforgettable odour, reminiscent of what was also deemed as a very characteristic smell of black people. Ideas about the abhorrent stench, steaming from the dirty and uncombed bodies of the Gypsies, corresponded to the period of bourgeois hygiene, counting especially filth among the primary elements of repugnance. The stench of the Gypsies was also associated with the colour of their skin. Already since their arrival to Europe they were seen as "black" due to their alleged Egyptian origins, just like the "wild and loathsome Africans or negroes", and were thus counted among the peoples of the lowest level. Therefore they were compared, for example, with the Hottentots, who had been regularly depicted as the lowest human race or the "transitional race" between man and ape ever since the early enlightenment. The image of the black "African" Gypsy remained deeply ingrained in the cultural memory, persisting even after the theory of the Gypsies originating in India established itself around the year 1800 and the Gypsies were predominantly classified as belonging to the Oriental-Asian type of olive-brown Indians. With the discovery of the Indian pariahs a triangle of despised peoples was in fact created. As it was, pariahs, resisting civilisation, represented convenient ancestors of Gypsies according to the equivalent principle. In turn, pariahs were once again compared to the African negroes. Meanwhile the racist comparison with the Hottentots and later pariahs helped demonstrate the foreign origin or strangeness and aberration of Gypsies in Europe. The unchristian diet of the Gypsies was also seen as especially repugnant. Their eating of carrion, whose unpleasant odour and taste resulted in profound aversion in the civilised people due to their numerous prejudices, was supposedly most obnoxious. The ingestion of carrion or the very contact with it represented severe danger in the eyes of the Europeans due to its capacity to pollute, infect and poison. Allegedly the Gypsies truly enjoyed eating carrion, which was incompatible with the essential characteristics and values at the highest level of civilisation. Towards the end of the 19th century the racist attitude to the Gypsies as an antisocial gang of savages kept strengthening, forming a paranoid language of aggressive defence from infection or fear of mixing with this supposed brood of pariahs, unproductive parasites and criminals, which purportedly threatened racial purity. In the Habsburg Monarchy ideas even appeared about deporting the degenerate Gypsies to penal colonies. A possibility of forming such a colony on one of the islands in the Adriatic was in fact considered, but the concept was not realised.
- Publication
Acta Histriae, 2015, Vol 23, Issue 1, p97
- ISSN
1318-0185
- Publication type
Article