Abstract:
This text presents a case study focused on the development of workhouses (known as "zemské donucovací pracovny" in Czech and "Zwangsarbeitsanstalten" in German) in the Bohemian lands during the first half of the 20th century. These institutions emerged as a form of modern disciplinary system. The study examines their role in the criminalization of Roma and Sinti communities and reconstructs the impact these workhouses had on both Romani and non-Romani inhabitants. The objective of our study is to explore the complex connections between workhouses and the criminalization of Roma and Sinti, offering a more nuanced perspective than what is currently available in Central European historiography. We aim to bridge the gap between various historical discourses surrounding the “G*psy question,” which often referenced continental workhouses, and the actual social practices within these institutions. Notably, many of these workhouses (particularly during the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods in Germany, as well as in Switzerland and the Habsburg Monarchy) housed a minimal number of Roma and Sinti.

Pavel Baloun is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague and a researcher at the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In 2022 he published the monograph "Metla našeho venkova" Kriminalizace Romů od první repuliky až po prvotní fázi protektorátu (1918-1941) ("The Scourge of our Country! The Criminalisation of the Roma from the First Czechoslovak Republic to the First Phase of the Protectorate, 1918-1941) and is working on the English version of this book. He is currently the principal investigator of the project Punish or Rehabilitate? Gender, Convict Labour and Discipline in the Workhouse in the Czech Lands in the First Half of the 20th Century, 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, Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague. His PhD project examines the development of disciplinary institutions, prison labour and penal thought in Czechoslovakia between the 1930s and 1960s. He is also a member of the research project Punish or Rehabilitate? Gender, Convict Labour and Discipline in the Workhouse in the Czech Lands, 1918-1950, led by Pavel Baloun. He is interested in the history of the Roma and published a monograph Holokaust a majetková perzekuce Romů v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (Holocaust and Property Persecution of the Roma in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) in 2024.
Contact: jiri.smlsal@gmail.com

Karola Fings is a German historian working at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism in the Department of History at the University of Heidelberg. She is the initiator and director of the 'Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe' project and a member of the German delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Contact: karola.fings@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de