GYPSIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE

Gypsies' hidden history

Half a million Romany gypsies from across occupied Europe were killed in the Holocaust - yet that fact is now largely forgotten. A recent survey by Emnid - a national German survey institute - showed that 68 per cent of Germans still have negative attitudes towards the 60,000 gypsies living in their country.

And, although the Romany peoples of Germany have been resident there for six centuries or more, they figure scantily in the mainstream literature of that country and their own stories are all but unpublished.

Now Dr Susan Tebbutt, of the University's Modern Languages Department, is seeking to disturb this silence with a book due to be published later this year - Sinti and Roma in German Society and Literature.

The Sinti are Romanies who have lived in Germany for the past 600 years, while the Roma, deriving principally from Eastern Europe, have settled in Germany during the past two centuries.

It was not gypsy literature, but books written for German teenagers which started Susan on the path leading to her present research.

"I was working in a school and became interested in using teenage literature with A-level students as a means of access to literature," she said.

"Through that, I became interested in the wide range of socially critical teenage literature available, particularly the work of one German writer - Gudrun Pausewang."

Susan completed a PhD on Pausewang and her work in 1994, in the same year organising a reading tour of British universities for the author.

From studying Pausewang - whose writing is concerned with anti-militarist, anti-nuclear and Third World issues, and strongly supportive of minority standpoints - Susan started examining other minorities writing in German.

She discovered one book for young people, transcribed from the spoken word - as Romany is a primarily oral language - of four generations of an extended family of gypsies living in Germany.

"I'd never come across anything about German gypsies, though I'd studied German for more than 25 years," she said. "I was commissioned to write this book because there was little accessible English material inter-relating German gypsies and their literature."

She is examining the representation of gypsies by non-gypsies, including their images in German fiction, as well as German-language writing by the Sinti and Roma themselves.

"I see literature within a social context, formed by the society in which it originates, and reflecting or distorting images of that society," said Susan.

"Given that Germany is a multi-cultural society, it is important to be aware of the overlapping oof different cultures in its language and literature.

"A lot of my work is to do with breaking down stereotypes, and exposing myths and prejudices about minorities like gypsies.

"Fewer than four per cent of Romanies in Germany are 'travellers' in any real sense - for most, travelling is limited to a couple of weeks caravanning in any one year.

"A lot of non-gypsies' prejudices are rooted in the 19th century rather than the late 20th century - but things are slowly changing. The United Nations have now recognised Romanies as an ethnic minority in several countries."

Susan gained her doctorate at the University of Sheffield, following an MA at St Andrews and PCGE at Leeds. She is a consultant author for the Open University's German course, due to start this year.