Yenish is both a proper and a foreign term for members of a population group in Central and Western Europe that is heterogeneous in terms of landscape and social origins and which, in a popular external view, would wander around in the manner of a Zigeuner". Historically, Yenish people go back to members of the marginalized and excluded groups of the poverty societies of the early modern period and the 19th century. Only a very small proportion of the descendants of this section of the population, such as Roma or "Betteljuden" »begging jews«, who were forced to migrate permanently, still travel today.

(c) Karola Fings/Ulrich F. Opfermann 2018