German Thesis Award Dissertation on reparations for Sinti and Roma receives award

Joey Rauschenberger worked as a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism between 2020 and 2024. His dissertation was written as part of the externally funded project Continuities of Antigypsyism in Baden-Württemberg after 1945. The Baden-Württemberg Foundation funded the research project as part of the joint project Reintegration, Blame, and Compensation: Coping and Not Coping with the Nazi Past in Baden-Württemberg and its Predecessor States from 1945 to 1952, based at the Universities of Heidelberg and Stuttgart. 

In his work, Joey Rauschenberger examines the extent to which the survivors of the Nazi genocide of Sinti and Roma were compensated by the Federal Republic of Germany, using Baden-Württemberg and its three predecessor states as examples. His findings, for which the historian evaluated numerous individual case files from the reparations offices in Freiburg, Tübingen, Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe, show that Sinti and Roma were less discriminated against by the authorities with regard to the payment of compensation than had previously been assumed in research. This finding contrasts with the disappointment and outrage of self-organizations and communities over the practice of compensating for persecution, which has been handed down to this day under the slogan “second persecution.” To explain the discrepancy between the perception of those affected and the empirical findings, Rauschenberger pursues a practice-theoretical approach and focuses on administrative workflows and everyday routines at government agencies. The historian shows that personal interactions between compensation staff and members of minority groups regularly ended in mutual misunderstanding and frustration. The experiences of Sinti and Roma in the volatile “contact zone” of compensation, which were shaped by individual behavior, unspoken expectations, and mutual prejudices, often influenced their perception of reparations just as much as the final decisions and sums of money paid out. The work is thus also a piece of cultural history of administrative action and provides insight into the shaping of political reconciliation processes.

The dissertation will be published in mid-2026 in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte series. As co-editor, Joey Rauschenberger will also publish an English-language anthology on reparations for Nazi injustice in the RCA series Interdisciplinary Studies in Antigypsyism in spring 2026.