Burgenlandroma

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The Burgenlandroma are Roma who live in Burgenland and the neighboring states of Hungary , Slovakia or Slovenia or come from these. Burgenland is influenced by Hungarian and Southeast European culture, where the Roma have been settled for a long time. They are strongly influenced by the Hungarian culture. The Roma subgroup of the Lovara ('horse traders') can be found for the most part in Burgenland and in border areas.

The Burgenlandroma have lived in Burgenland for centuries, but have only been recognized by the Republic of Austria as one of the autochthonous ethnic groups since 1993 . The language Roman (es) , the local variety of Romani , was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage in Burgenland in 2011 by an advisory board of the UNESCO commission .

Distinction

The Roma ethnic group can be differentiated based on the language variants. A bond between the groups within the internationally much broader spectrum can be seen in the subgroups living in the four neighboring countries of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary :

history

The territorial division of Austria-Hungary after the First World War
The Burgenland

Period of the Habsburg Monarchy

The Roma came to Burgenland between 1530 and 1680 and were soon considered an “outlawed caste” in Europe. If they did not seem useful to the respective rulers, they were " fair game ", were deported or persecuted. "Vagabond gypsies invade the Austrian duchies in hordes," said Emperor Charles VI in 1725 . and ordered all male " gypsies " to be executed and an ear to be cut off from women and children under the age of 18. A period of gypsy persecution began . The authorities were punished for not tolerating “gypsies” in the vicinity of a village or market for even an hour.

Archduchess Maria Theresa and after her Emperor Joseph II tried to capture the "Gypsies", to force them to settle down and to prescribe regular work for them. The "Gypsies" were forbidden to use their Romani language, to marry one another or to change names. With resettlement programs , their children were distributed to the neighboring towns at least every two years in order to ensure official control. Subsequent attempts by Roma families to bring back the children who had been forcibly taken away from them led to the racist prejudice, which is still widespread today, that Roma steal children. The marriage ban promoted intercultural marriages . A researcher draws the conclusion that "many a Burgenlander who would do genealogical research today could prove that at the end of the 18th century gypsies also married into their families". However, all these registrations, ordinances and penal provisions changed little in the way of life of the Roma and in the attitudes towards them. After the abolition of Roma slavery in the Romanian territories in the middle of the 19th century, Roma groups again came to Central Europe from south-east Europe.

Between the wars and the Anschluss

After the First World War, after the annexation of Burgenland to Austria, the new Austrian government faced several minorities: in addition to the Burgenland Croats and the Burgenland Hungarians, the Burgenlandroma minority. In the interwar period, the Burgenlandroma were photographically registered for their own "Gypsy card file", and foreign Roma were deported.

Roma settlement in Oberwart, 1930s

The economic hardship and the rise of racial ideological agitation led to an increasingly hostile attitude towards them from the 1920s onwards. The "Gypsies" were held responsible for the high level of unemployment , were considered to be work-shy, lazy to work, stealing and morally depraved. It was "a mockery of the law to allow the raw, feral gypsies who are unsuitable for society to receive the same protection of society as civilized people". In Burgenland in particular, this hatred increased very quickly and passed seamlessly into National Socialist racism . Tobias Portschy , appointed by Adolf Hitler as governor of Burgenland, wrote: "The gypsies form a foreign body based on certain biological conditions, and it is therefore no wonder if they are called inferior." He also called for the establishment of labor camps for them "Gypsies" also forced sterilization . As part of the National Socialists' extermination policy, almost all of them were deported to the gypsy camp Auschwitz and either murdered immediately in the concentration camp's gas chambers or victims of forced labor , genetic research, typhus experiments and other human experiments . Only about 400 of the originally 7,000 "Gypsies" survived the Holocaust ( Porajmos ).

In many cases, the survivors had no relatives or homes, the older generation of culture and language carriers were almost completely murdered. Many Roma traumatized by the history of persecution of their families longed for anonymity and a new identity. Therefore, some denied their ancestry, posed as guest workers or entered their names in German. This attitude of a socially marginalized group has remained in part until today.

Post-war situation

In the post-war decades, the Burgenlandroma, although they have been resident here for centuries, were supposedly “wandering around” and not recognized as an autochthonous (“old-established”) ethnic group in the Austrian ethnic group law; their ethnic and language group is ignored in censuses and they receive no funding whatsoever. Apart from the “ Association for the Promotion of Gypsies ” there are no representatives for them in Austria. Nevertheless, they are talked about and negotiated. The memory of the past under the Nazi regime made the history of the “Gypsies” during the Nazi rule and their current situation more aware. It was not until 1986 that the Austrian League for Human Rights, together with the Auschwitz camp community, tried to bring up the suffering of the "Gypsies" during the Third Reich . The federal government was approached in order, more than 40 years later, to achieve equality between those "gypsies" who had been tortured and tortured in the Lackenbach gypsy detention camp and in Maxglan with the other victims of the concentration camps. Because “it should be in the interest of the Austrian state and the political culture in our country to allow the survivors of this particularly discriminated group of victims to receive the outstanding compensation payments and victim pensions”.

This inequality of the “Gypsies” with other concentration camp victims shows how much this minority had to live on the margins of society. There are the typical problems such as dealing with the authorities, inadequate personal documents, unclear citizenship in the post-war years, partially existing illiteracy up to incriminating criminal records, often for crimes as a result of discriminatory trade bans or insignificant property crimes; and it is the typical prejudices that still discriminate against these people today. In 1988 they received victim and maintenance pensions for the first time from Minister of Social Affairs Alfred Dallinger and Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky .

In 1993, the Roma were recognized as an autochthonous ethnic group, initially the last ethnic group, according to the National Ethnic Groups Act of 1976 (in principle throughout Austria, only affects the Burgenlandroma, Sinti and Lovara ).

On February 4, 1995, four young Roma were murdered in Oberwart in a racially motivated bomb attack, the most serious attack since 1945 with a domestic political background. It was only as a result of the media attention it triggered that public awareness of the problems of the discriminated minority grew.

Situation today

It is estimated that there are between 2,500 and 5,000 Burgenlandromas today . Most of them live in Oberwart and the surrounding area, whereby - according to the results of the 2001 census - Unterwart (with more than 5%) and Kleinbachselten (with around 10%) have significant proportions of the total population. Other Roma and Roma families live in central and northern Burgenland or have settled in eastern Austrian cities. According to the degree of assimilation , three groups can be distinguished:

  • The assimilated Roma families mostly live in cities.
  • The partially assimilated Roma live in relative prosperity.
  • Stigmatized and discriminated Roma live as a social minority on the fringes of society.

The culture and language of this ethnic group has been officially promoted in Austria since 1993. Projects such as B.

Special culture of the Burgenlandroma

language

The local variety of the Burgenlandroma language is called Romanes or Roman . It is part of the minority language of Romani, which is recognized according to the ethnic group law . Today it is primarily passed on outside of families in the form of language courses for different age groups.

In March 2011 the Austrian UNESCO Commission included this language as a novel - the language of the Burgenland Roma - in the register of the national intangible cultural heritage in Austria , in the section Orally transmitted traditions and forms of expression . The purpose of this designation is binding protection as a living cultural tradition. She was expelled for Burgenland.

music

The music of the Burgenlandroma consists largely of the clarinet , cymbal , viola , double bass and violin . This music shows similarities with the music of the "Hungarian Roma". Also known are so-called gypsy bands ("bandas"), which often play at large events such as celebrations, weddings, dance events and parades or on Kirtagen . At New Year's games at other appearances, e.g. B. Traditional customs, these chapels came to many places in Burgenland.

The following bands are known today:

media

The ORF 2 emits six times a year a program of the name: "Hello, Szia, Zdravo, Del tuha" from. This is a four-language television magazine from ORF Burgenland . The languages ​​used are: German , Hungarian , Burgenland-Croatian and Romanes . This broadcast addresses cultural and folk topics of all ethnic groups in Burgenland. In addition to the Burgenlandroma, these are the Burgenland Hungarians and the Burgenland Croats . The presenter of this program is Katharina Graf-Janoska .

Events

Every year a Roma ball is organized in Oberwart by the Burgenland Roma community college. It is a miss election that is accompanied by music.

Well-known Burgenlandroma

See also

literature

  • Valentin Inzko : The systematic Germanization. In: Reinhold Henke (Ed.): Letting life is not enough. Minorities in Austria . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-218-00468-3 , pp. 80ff.
  • Günther Hödl (Ed.): Report of the working group "Situation and Perspectives of the Nationalities in Austria". Böhlau, Vienna 1989 (2 vols.).
  1. Main band. 1989, ISBN 3-205-05260-9 .
  2. Statistical supplementary book. 1989, ISBN 3-205-05261-7 .
  • Klemens Ludwig : Ethnic minorities in Europe. A lexicon; Basques, Bretons, Armenians in the Diaspora, Turks in Bulgaria, Danes in Germany, Sorbs, Valais, Scots . Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39215-6 , 235 pp.
  • Erich Schneller: Gypsies, Roma, people. Life reports of Burgenland Roma. Edition lex liszt 12, Oberwart 2006, ISBN 3-901757-47-3 .
  • Mri Historija. Life stories of the Burgenland Roma . Special series of the magazine dROMa . Roma-Service, Kleinbachselten 2011 (15 volumes, each brochure and DVD)
  1. An interview with Walpurga Horvath . 2011.
  2. Anton Müller in conversation . 2011.
  3. Johann Baranyi in conversation . 2011.
  4. An interview with Johann Sarközi . 2011.
  5. Anton Papai in conversation . 2011.
  6. Conversation with Adolf Papai . 2011.
  7. Wilhelm Horvath in conversation . 2011.
  8. Interview with János Horváth . 2011.
  9. An interview with Koloman Baranyi . 2011.
  10. Rudolf Sarközi in conversation . 2011.
  11. Josef Horwath in conversation . 2011.
  12. A conversation with Margarethe Baranyi . 2011.
  13. Karl Horvath in conversation . 2011.
  14. Johann Baranyi in conversation . 2011.
  15. Ludwig Horvath in conversation . 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Minorities (politics). Democracyzentrum.org (accessed March 31, 2016).
  2. ↑ Around 40,000 Roma and Sinti live in Austria. medienservicestelle.at, undated (accessed January 29, 2019).
  3. ↑ a b Roman - the language of the Burgenland Roma. Austrian Commission for UNESCO: Directory of the intangible cultural heritage in Austria (immaterielleskulturerbe.unesco.at).