The year 1407 is regarded by the experts as the day that Sinti, then still calling themselves “Zigeuner”, have arrived in Germany. However, that year only marks them turning up in the register as having attended the Eichamt, the local office of the approval of weights and measures, in the city of Hildesheim, where there is a bill in the archives that mentions a groups of Gypsies having had some measuring tools approved.
How does that make for the year of arrival? In my view this actually points to the fact that Zigeuner, Gypsies, have been in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, well before that time, and arrived much earlier.
It is absolute stupidity and narrow mindedness to run with this date and year as the arrival year of Zigeuner, Gypsies, in Germany. It just does not compute. Does no one realize that? But then, it suits the experts in order to support their theories as to when the Romani People left the area between the Caucasus and the Indus Valley.
What language would those Zigeuner that went to the Eichamt in Hildesheim have spoken and understood? This certainly cannot be a group of people that have just arrived in medieval Germany speaking the Romani tongue, or, if lucky, some Turkish or Greek. Local government offices and Landjaeger, the military style police, or it may have even been Shire Reeves, like in Britain, from the name of which derives the word Sheriff in the English language, in that period would, I am sure, not have understood or spoken Romani nor Greek or even Latin in order to tell them that they have to have their measuring tools approved by the Eichamt. The Gypsies certainly would not have understood any of the ancient German dialects, akin, probably, to old Anglo-Saxon, either had they just arrived. So, what then? This points, in fact, to a group of Gypsy People who have been living in the German realm for some considerable time, generations probably if not even longer.
To take the date of 1407 when those Zigeuner, those Gypsy People, had to attend the Eichamt to have their measuring tools approved as the date of Gypsy arrival in Germany makes absolutely no sense and is nonsense. Think about it from the point of understanding of language, as I said in the previous paragraph.
Think about it...
© Michael Smith (Veshengro), March 2008
