830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
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Regine Ziegler was a Transylvanian Saxon poet and writer, who by the turn of the century lived for some years in Berlin, where her brother Karl Ziegler (1866–1945) was a successful portrait painter. In 1913 she assessed that in her writings she aimed to present the Saxons in their whole complexity, wishing that in the future all Germans should know Transylvania and its German inhabitants. Contiguous to the Saxons she presented the „sultry and passionate” Romanians, the „primitive and impulsive” Gypsies and the „nationalistic” Hungarians, she all had known from her multiethnic village Arkeden/Archita. Regine Ziegler’s approach, although characteristic for the epoch of fierce nationalism, breathes great sympathy for all Transylvanian ethnic groups.
The paper analyzes the handling of sources in the historic and ethnographic literature about Roma. In it a tradition of copying can be found without sufficient acknowledgement of sources, the unchecked assumpti on of foreign statements and inadmissible generalization. These characteristic features are integrated into a pejorative structure. The historic and ethnographic literature is characterized by a moralizing condemnation of those referred to as „gypsies” whereas the social realities remain largely hidden. It is based on only a few sources, in which statements about Roma in the Transylvanian area take a key role. Texts from the 17th to the 19th century are referred to in context of this aspect and are analyzed on their contents.