Maladjusted And Dangerous: Image And Status Of Gypsies In The Past

Throughout European history, barely any other peoples have been as mistrusted and despised as Gypsies. Apart from the romantic clichés, which had nothing to do with reality and merely resulted from the dreams and yearning of the bourgeois society for free and uninhibited life, most of the notions about Gypsies consisted of negative notions, stereotypes and social prejudice. In this regard there is no doubt whatsoever, judging from the dictionaries, encyclopaedias and conversational lexicons, published around the middle of the 19th century, for example. The vocabulary entry “Gypsies” described these people as musical talents as well as vagrant rabble, criminals, thieves and swindlers.