ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 reexamines the cornerstone text Die Zigeuner, ein historischer Versuch über die Lebensart, Verfassung und Schicksale dieses Volkes in Europa, nebst ihrem Ursprunge [Dissertation on the Gipsies: Being an Historical Enquiry, Concerning the Manner of Life, Family, Economy, Customs and Conditions of These People in Europe, and Their Origin, 1787] by Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann, who adapted and transformed colonial thinking. In particular, he applies the binary opposition of ugly “Blacks” and beautiful “Whites” developed by his close friend Christopher Meiners in the basic text Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschenkeit [Outline of Human History, 1785] in order to establish a comprehensive “white” theory concerning Roma. We focus on the innovative approach of Grellmann that combined previously opposed approaches to blackness as either inherited or interiorized in order to generate, introduce and disseminate a cascade of binary oppositions such as human vs. animal, blackness vs. whiteness, and women vs. men, which fixed the impossibility of Roma to become white.
