Romani History Seminar: „Correction, Violence and Race in the Workhouses of the Czech Lands“
On Wednesday, 30 October at 6:00 PM CET, we will discuss Pavel Baloun´s and Jiří Smlsal´s preliminary article „Correction, Violence and Race in the Workhouses of the Czech Lands".
On Wednesday, 30 October at 6:00 PM CET, we will discuss Pavel Baloun´s and Jiří Smlsal´s preliminary article „Correction, Violence and Race in the Workhouses of the Czech Lands“. Karola Fings will be our invited discussant for this session.
Please register here: https://cesnet.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMsdO-srTwrGtQk5merN6V5u4EKXooVjXrG
Abstract
This text is a case study that, firstly, deals with the development of the workhouses (zemské donucovací pracovny in Czech and Zwangsarbeitsanstalten in German) on the territory of Bohemian lands in the first half of the 20th century as a type of modern disciplinary institution. Secondly, it focuses on their role in the context of the criminalization of Roma and Sinti, and, thirdly, reconstructs how these institutions affected Romani as well as non-Romani inhabitants. The aim of our study is to search for a more nuanced understanding of multiple connections between workhouses and the criminalization of Roma and Sinti than the existing Central European historiography offers. We want to overcome the contradiction between analyses of manifold historical discourses of the “Gypsy question” in which continental workhouses were frequently referred to and findings on the social practice of some of these institutions (especially in the context of Wilhemine and Weimar Germany, Switzerland and the Habsburg Monarchy) with a negligible number of Roma and Sinti behind their walls.
Pavel Baloun is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague and a researcher at the Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences. In 2022 he published a monograph (in Czech) „The Scourge of Our Countryside!“ The Criminalisation of the Roma from the First Czechoslovak Republic until the First Phase of the Protectorate (1918-1941) and is working on the English version. Currently, he is a principal investigator of the project entitled Punish or Rehabilitate? Gender, Convict Labour, and Disciplination in the Workhouse in the Czech lands in the First Half of the 20th Century which was supported by the Czech Science Foundation.
Contact: pavel.baloun@gmail.com
Jiří Smlsal is a PhD. student at the Institute of Economic and Social History at Charles University in Prague. His PhD project examines the development of disciplinary institutions, convict labour and correctional thought in Czechoslovakia between the 1930s and 1960s. He is also a member of the research project Punish or Rehabilitate? Gender, Convict Labour, and Disciplination in the Workhouse in the Czech lands, 1918-1950 at the Czech Academy of Science. He is interested in Romani history and recently published a monograph (in Czech) „Holocaust and Property Persecution of Roma in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Contact: jiri.smlsal@gmail.com
Karola Fings is a German historian, working at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at the Department of History at Heidelberg University. She is initiator and head of the project ‘Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe‘ and a member of the German delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Contact: karola.fings@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
!! Pavel Baloun’ s and Jiří Smlsal´s text will be sent to registered participants one week before the meeting – 23 October. If you register later, we cannot guarantee timely dispatch.
Please note: papers presented at the seminar have not been published yet. As a participant of the Romani History Seminar, you agree to respect the intellectual property of the author, i. e. to not reproduce, distribute, display or use their paper, sections of their paper, or their primary sources in any way.
Romani History Seminar hosts online discussions of unpublished texts, such as dissertation chapters, draft papers, and book chapters. Our goal is to bring together specialists in Romani history and scholars from related fields to provide collective feedback on ongoing historiographical work.
If you would like to discuss your paper at the Romani History Seminar, please contact one of the organizers below.
Contacts for Romani History Seminar:
Renata Berkyová (berkyova@usd.cas.cz)
Vita Zalar (vita.zalar@gmail.com)
