H eiko H aumann . Die Akte Zilli Reichmann

In Die Akte Zilli Reichmann, Heiko Haumann aims to do two things: to introduce readers to the twentieth-century history of German Sinti (the largest group of German Romanies, who are often referred to by the pejorative terms “Gypsies” and “Zigeuner”) and to write the biography of a German Sinti woman whose life spanned that century. It does both with considerable success. As a biography, Haumann’s work stands out in a field that has struggled to give voice to subjects who are often not prepared to write book-length accounts of their lives themselves. As a result, most biographies of German Sinti are opaque about their methods, and nearly all bear the imprint of editors who have intervened heavily in the creative process. Often the published text is a collage of transcribed oral history interviews, as in the case of Walter Winter’s WinterZeit: Erinnerungen eines deutschen Sinto, der Auschwitz überlebt hat (1999), ghost-edited by Thomas W. Neumann and Michael Zimmermann. In other cases, non-Romani authors have written biographies that weave oral testimonies together with a narrative provided by a named author, as in the case of the biographies written by Anja Tuckermann about Hugo and Mano Höllenreiner. Scholars regularly cite such works but must be cautious about drawing conclusions from them. Haumann avoids these pitfalls in his latest book. Rather than purporting to speak for Zilli Reichmann, the Romani woman at the heart of his book, Haumann clearly distinguishes between his survey of Romani history and Reichmann’s accounts of her youth in the 1920s, her persecution under the Nazis, and her difficulties with authorities after 1945. The work is empathetic yet analytical in tone.

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