Manfred Lautenschläger Prize The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities honors Joey Rauschenberger's dissertation
Joey Rauschenberger has been awarded the Manfred Lautenschläger Prize by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities for his doctoral dissertation titled “Reparations for Sinti and Roma: A History of the Practice of Compensation for Nazi Injustices in Baden-Württemberg, 1945–1980.” The prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, supports the humanities and cultural studies with a focus on history, society, and culture. It is intended to serve as both a “recognition” and a “driving force” for young researchers and was awarded for the first time in 2022.
This work, which has already been honored with the German Academic Award and the Willy Brandt Prize for Contemporary History, is the first comprehensive study — using Baden-Württemberg as a case study — of how Sinti and Roma were compensated in the Federal Republic of Germany. Rauschenberger situates the proceedings within their administrative contexts and sketches an exemplary microhistory of the compensation administration in southwestern Germany. In doing so, he reveals the complex web of human interaction between case workers, applicants, lawyers, and other actors that turned the compensation proceedings into a “contact zone.” Everyday encounters, experience-based expectations, deep-seated prejudices, and spontaneous actions influenced the practice and perception of reparations. The resulting disappointments often overshadowed and undermined the material compensation provided.
The dissertation will be published in early August 2026 in the series of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. As co-editor, Joey Rauschenberger will also publish an English-language anthology on reparations for Nazi injustices in the FSA series Antiziganismusforschung interdisziplinär in the summer of 2026.
Joey Rauschenberger worked as a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Research Center 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 collaborative project Reintegration, Blame, and Compensation: Coming to Terms with and Failing to Come to Terms with the Nazi Past in Baden-Württemberg and Its Predecessor States, 1945–1952, based at the Universities of Heidelberg and Stuttgart.