On April 8, Romani and Sinti actors and musicians shall stand at the very centre of perhaps Berlin’s most historic stage: the Volksbühne. When this year’s Romaday Parade in honour of International Roma Day ends at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, instead of continuing festivities at the Volksbühne’s Grüner Salon, which since September 2022 has been Europe’s first Roma-hosted theatre space, the celebration will continue onto the main stage. The move signifies another step forward in the work of arts advocacy organisation RomaTrial in establishing the Volksbühne as a locus of Roma and Sinti performance and life in this city. But it is where the Romaday Parade begins – at the memorial to the murdered Sinti and Roma of Europe – that will cast a shadow over this year’s proceedings, even as such acts as Mahala Raï Banda and Mal Élevé & friends perform under stage lights.
The Romani and Sinti presence at the Volksbühne is more important than ever for Germany’s so-called theatre of memory.
In December, the Berlin Senate approved a plan to temporarily close the Tiergarten memorial so an S-Bahn tunnel could be built underneath it. The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma are supporting this project, justifying their decision by declaring that to stand in the way of infrastructure development that could affect Berliners’ lives would increase anti-Roma sentiment. However, as with the Jewish community – where the Central Council hardly represents all Jews – so it goes even more so with the Roma and Sinti; the council does not even represent a majority of the Roma and Sinti organisations in this nation. Indeed, its support for this closure has been highly contested, as a December discussion at the Grüner Salon with Hamze Bytici, the leader of RomaTrial, sociologist and activist Leah Carolla Czollek and Kelly Laubinger, co-chair of the Federal Association of Roma and Sinti, emphasised.
Though the closure is a temporary measure, the construction would end up altering the landscape – removing trees, tearing up ground – as conceived by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan, who until his death was against this plan. The Senate’s willingness to suspend access to the monument less than 10 years after it was dedicated with grand phrases about moral responsibility spotlights a a shockingly shallow Erinnerungskultur – especially where Roma and Sinti are concerned.
In the face of this moral failure, the Romani and Sinti presence at the Volksbühne is more important than ever for Germany’s so-called theatre of memory. Of course, Roma and Sinti have been telling their own stories for a long time. And RomaTrial is hardly the only contemporary artistic Romani presence in the city. Since 2017, Rom*nja Power theatre collective has been staging works across Berlin since 2017. And the Maxim Gorki Theatre has offered itself, under Shermin Langhoff, as a base for Roma and Sinti theatre, including 2018’s International Romaday and Roma Armee, a collaboration between the director Yael Ronen and actresses Sandra Selimović and Simonida Selimović (who also are core members of Rom*nja Power) and, this year, Lindy Larsson’s Tschandala – The Romani Version. However, at RomaTrial’s Grüner Salon, Roma host the performances and discussions, staging a diversity of stories that might otherwise not have a place to unfold.
One such production the Grüner Salon enabled was January’s Noncia Alfreda: Heldin des Widerstands (“Noncia Alfreda: Heroine of the Resistance”) from Rom*nja Power and RomaniPhen. The performance, which migrated from a Grüner Salon reading last fall to a full production at the Volksbühne’s 3rd Floor Studios, used a pitch of the first Romani Marvel superhero to explore the deeds of Noncia Alfreda Markowska, a Polish Romani woman who saved scores of children in World War II. The piece attempted to fill in the enormous gaps in German public discourse, from the invisibility of Romani experience in World War II – where the Nazi persecution and genocide committed against them is too often subsumed by that of the Jews – through the ongoing struggle against systemic discrimination that Roma and Sinti still face in Germany. It was a heroic effort – but the gaps are too great for any single piece to fill.
This public ignorance is darkly underscored by this threat to the memorial. Karavan carved out a sacred glen in Tiergarten, with a reflecting pool at its heart, to recognise the ongoing life of Romani and Sinti peoples as well as the ongoing mourning – a present-tense reality performed through a daily ritual. Every day at 1 pm, the island at the pool’s centre, which holds a day-old flower, descends. It returns with a fresh bloom; so memory – and life – should never fade. If only the Senate would attend to this theatre of memory. But as RomaTrial’s work spotlights, Roma and Sinti today will not consent to their own marginalisation. They are taking centre stage, laying the foundations for a theatre not only of memory but also for a more equitable future.
- Visit romaday.info to see the full programme of upcoming events.
