The first Roma entered German-speaking territories around 1400. Various historical sources document their arrival in Bohemia in 1399; in 1407 they are thought to have presented their papers at Hildesheim; the entered Hessen in 1414, Meißen in 1416, Zürich, Magdeburg and Lübeck in 1417. Their presence in Alsace and Saxony is documented by 1418. That Roma originally came from India is to-day as undisputed as the fact that Jews came from the Middle East, but they were puzzled over for centuries and were eventually held to be Egyptians expelled for being Christian. To-day, linguist and historians believe that they left their homeland in north-west India in various migratory waves around the year 1000, but perhaps also as early as the fifth century AD.

As with Jews, Roma are to-day scattered all over the world. Their language, Romanes, is related to Sanskrit. It has several dialects as well as numerous words absorbed from Greek and Armenian en route to Europe: wherever Roma settled, Romanes proceeded to adopt scores of words and phrases from the local language. Roma who came to Germany, Austria and the adjoining regions (Northern Italy, Slovenia, Bohemia, Alsace-Lorraine) 600 years ago call themselves Sinti. Theories link this wording to the state of Sindh in present-day Pakistan, leading a well-known organisation, Freiburg's Sindhi Union, to orient its spelling on this name. It was not until the last century and then during the Weimar Republic and after 1945 that families from Eastern and Southern Europe have come to, or fled to, Germany: in these regions they call themselves Roma. The term "Sinti and Roma" has entered general use in the Federal Republic since 1979, but the international civil rights movement prefers to use the word "Roma" as a general, more inclusive description.

The majority of south-eastern Europe's Roma population, ¾ of the continent's total, lead settled lives, Central European Sinti lived more migratory lives, albeit generally confined to one specific area. Large numbers settled permanently in urban areas only with the unification of Germany under Bismark, on account of steadily increasing impediments.

The first 80 years of Roma presence in Germany have gone down as a "golden era". In possession of letters patent from the Holy Roman Emperor among others, they were able to move freely throughout the Empire, their exotic nature causing excitement and amazement: in many places they enjoyed the hospitality of the local population.

The prelude to persecution came, supposedly, in 1942 when Duke Achilles of Brandenburg forbade Roma to reside within his territories. The imperial diats of Lindau and Freiburg (1496, 1497 and 1498) were the Empire's follow-up to this example, retracting the protection offered by Sigesmund long before. Now anyone could hunt, expel, imprison or kill Roma as they wished. Kaiser Ferdinand (1556-1564) "relaxed" laws in as far as women and children could no longer be killed arbitrarily. After the Empire's collapse into a myriad of mini-states, these laws were not in force everywhere: migrating to another territory became a means of survival for Roma. On the other hand, states staged individual campaigns against the "flood of Gypsies". In the time between 1497 and 1774 alone there were more than 146 expulsions, the Thirty Years' War providing the only respite. In the 17th and 18th century the persecution continued unabated. Roma were branded, expelled or executed. In 1725 Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm II commanded that they be hanged without trial, their brown skin being all the proof needed. States in the upper Rhine region passed laws in 1709 ordering deportation or hanging for every Roma arrested; Frankfurt am Main decreed that children could be separated from their parents by force.

This uninterrupted litany of unprovoked, centuries-long harassment of Central Europe's Roma echoes contemporary anti-Semitism. Medieval anti-Jewish laws remained in force until the 18th and 19th centuries. Wolfgang Scheffer explained this historical anti-Semitism in the following manner: "in times of need, an medieval world predisposed to mystical interpretations sought explanations for the causes of catastrophes. Plague, famine, fires, unexplained murders, incurable diseases etc. were ascribed to the foreigner, the suspicious non-Christian... This is how the medieval Jew was declared to be guilty and persecuted cruelly for it". This is also how contemporary fears were transferred to the foreign-seeming Roma population, with their dark skin and unintelligible language. Roma bore plague and cholera, they were responsible for invasions of rats, related to Jews, stole children, practised cannibalism. They had loose morals, spied for Turks or tartars. Temporal and ecclesiastical powers accused Jews and Roma of the same things over and over again: apostasy, witchcraft, fraud and theft were among their supposed "crimes".

At the turn of the 19th century, the physical presence of Roma was tolerated at least, as pariahs. During their brief stay in villages and towns they earned their living as cutlery-makers, scissors-sharpeners, pot-menders, shoemakers, basket-weavers and musicians. Schemes to have them settled were initiated in several German states, but failure was preprogrammed into the inhuman manner in which these schemes were implemented. In Württemburg, extended families were forcibly broken up and scattered throughout the state as individual families. When the divided families tried to regroup officials usually forced them to move elsewhere. Ordinances by Maria Theresa and Joseph II in Austria-Hungary affected only the edges of German-speaking Europe, Western Hungary (Burgenland since 1918). Here, draconian measures were used, "successfully" in part, to force Roma to settle; Romanes was outlawed, marriages were forced with non-Roma, children were taken from their families.

The founding of Wilhemine Germany in 1871 facilitated the long term co-ordination of repression of Roma, repression perfected, amazingly under the Weimar Republic which prepared the way for Nazi genocide. As early as 1871 itself the Hessen interior ministry gave directions to local authorities to forbid the issuing of work permits to migrant Roma and advising caution when dealing with native-born Sinti; it was claimed that Berlin gave its support to these measures. In 1885 in neighbouring Austria, a "verdict on vagabonds" permitted the retention of forced labour. 1896, the Chancellor's office forbade issuing migratory work permits to Roma; Prussia's "Measure against Gypsy havoc" of February 12th 1902 again focused such deprivations on immigrant Roma. 1886 had seen the start of transports of "Gypsies without German citizenship" to the border. The nationwide law on "Forced Upbringing for Minors", passed on January 1st 1900, affected first and foremost Roma and Sinti families. A precursor of modern information centres can be found in 1899 when such an office was established; in Bavaria it had by 1904 compiled 3,350 files on families and individuals. In 1905 Alfred Dillmann published guidelines to "deal with this plague of Gypsies": commissioned by the Bavarian interior ministry he compiled a resumé of all pertinent statutes and laws passed between 1816 and 1903. His office in Munich became the centre from which Germany's "Gypsy campaign" was based, accentuating the criminalisation of the Roma population and pointing the way to the later "Gypsy police" in Munich (under Weimar) and the bureau in Himmler's interior ministry which was to take over all dealing with Roma and Sinti in 1938.

The first three decades of this century saw Roma settle more and more in German cities. Families were searching for a respite from repression and from the deteriorating conditions in trading and handicrafts.

In April 1926, the Republic's states passed a collective law to "combat Gypsies in the German Reich"; on June 16th 1926 a law against "Gypsies, itinerants and the work-shy" was passed in Munich and in November 1927 the Prussian interior ministry ordered the fingerprinting of all Roma. In such ways the first German republic implemented an "exceptional" statute against an ethnic groups, a measure which could not be reconciled with the Weimar constitution.