Stepping out from the shadows: the civil rights movement of the German Sinti and Roma

In the face of ongoing discrimination, the German Sinti and Roma began to organise themselves politically. From the late 1970s onwards, the emergent civil rights movement succeeded in drawing attention to its objectives both nationally and internationally through a number of high-profile campaigns. During this phase, the Society for Threatened Peoples and its chairman, Tilman Zülch, played an important supporting role. After decades being marginalised from society, representatives of the Sinti and Roma were now assertively demanding their civil rights. Pivotal to this trend was the cultural and political shift that occurred in West German society in the 1970s.