Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

INSTITUTIONS | SPEECHES   199 Institutions ©Bavarian Regional Association of German Sinti and Roma Dear Regional Bishop Kopp, Dear Dr Hammermann, Dear Father Mensing, Dear Dotschy Reinhardt, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking you for inviting me here to- day and giving me the opportunity to share a few introductory thoughts as we commemorate the hunger strike carried out 45 years ago by members of the German Sinti and Roma civil rights movement. On 4 April 1980 – Good Friday – twelve Sinti and a social worker began their hunger strike at this very place. Their protest   was supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which pro- vided rooms in the Church of Reconciliation on the memorial grounds for this purpose. This political intervention marked a turning point in the public perception of the minority. It inspired a great wave of solidarity and drew considerable media attention in Germany and abroad, marking a crucial milestone on the path towards recognition of the genocide of Sinti and Roma. It stands among the most significant events in the civil rights efforts of German Sinti and Roma. To understand its importance, I would like to outline several key events that led up to the hunger strike. Above all, I must address the persecution that Sinti and Roma continued to face in Germany even after 1945. Their stigmatisation and marginalisation continued well beyond 1945 – not only within society, but also within state institutions. In 1953, for example, Bavaria introduced the so-called “Landfahrerordnung”, a regulation preserving many elements of the “Law for Combating Gypsies, Vagrants and the Work-Shy”, which had been adopted back in 1926. Its practical enforcement included stringent identification and registration Erich Schneeberger Chairman of the Bavarian Regional Association   of German Sinti and Roma Ceremony commemorating the 45th anniversary of the hunger strike of German Sinti in Dachau  4 April 2025 requirements – based on the persistent notion that so-called “vagrants” posed a general threat. At that time, Bavaria was governed by a coalition of the CSU and SPD. The Deputy Minister-President and Minister of the Interior was Wilhelm Hoegner of the SPD, often regarded as the father of the Bavari- an Constitution. But what did this new regulation mean in practice for mem- bers of the minority? Let me illustrate this briefly through the words of Franz Wirbel, one of the three Holocaust survivors who participated in the hunger strike in Dachau and later served as the first chairman of our Bavarian State Association. He describes his post-war experiences as follows:“My first negative experience came in June 1953 when I went to register my car. I had to stand next to it while the criminal police in Straubing took pictures of me. Like every Sinto at the time,   I was summoned to the criminal police and questioned about whether I planned to travel. They told me that I would need a Landfahrerbuch. At campsites, things got worse year after year; we were turned away ever more frequently. The signs saying ‘No Entry for Travellers’ started appearing in the early 1960s. Things became increasingly difficult for us. Even when the occasional farmer let us stay on his meadow – maybe with ten wagons – the police would still come and drive us off his land. In the 1970s, whenever the police surrounded a site where Sinti families were staying, they would turn up with submachine guns and trained German shepherds. And we would be mocked by their laughter. That was just the norm”. These are the words of Franz Wirbel. But how could such discriminatory special legislation be intro- duced so soon after the war? As early as 1946, the State Crim- inal Police Office set up an “Information Office on Gypsies” in Munich. This department became known as the “Gypsy Police”. It appointed former SS perpetrators, including Josef Eichberger,