Romani Berlin: ‘Gypsy’ Presence, the Culture of the Horse Market and the Shaping of Urban Space 1890–1933

Abstract

This article explores the Romani contribution to the construction of urban space(s), focusing on the city of Berlin between about 1890 and 1933, with a particular emphasis on the period between the turn of the century and the First World War. Drawing on press reports, it offers evidence for public awareness of a new Romani presence in and around the city, and proposes that media representations of ‘Gypsies’ in the new suburbs reflected the heightened sensitivity to setting boundaries between urban and rural, civilized and uncivilized, that informed Berlin's ‘urban imaginary’ at a time of expansion and modernization. In a second step, the agency of Romani Berliners in defining the city as a multi-ethnic metropolis and shaping spaces within it is considered. The account focuses on productive interactions between Romani and non-Romani actors in the horse markets which drew Sinti and Roma to settle in Berlin and on the lives of horse-dealing families in the city at large, including the tendential emergence of ‘Gypsy’ neighbourhoods.