In the Hessian region, Sinti and Roma were first mentioned in Frankfurt am Main in 1414 and in Nassau in 1501 as "gypsies". In Wiesbaden, they can be found in documents from the 18th century. As in all absolutist dominions, Nassau edicts of the time also initiated police persecution aimed at "exterminating the gypsies". Nothing is known here of attempts at assimilation by force, as was implemented in some other German territories.

It was not until the 19th century, with the establishment of the nation state, that information about Sinti and Roma could be found again, who were now differentiated in the decrees and files into German and non-German Sinti. They were perceived as "travelers", non-German Roma were expelled from the country, while German Sinti were deported to the neighboring district or to the German "homeland". The Prussian ministerial decree to "combat the gypsy plague" from 1906 was implemented annually through raids. How many Sinti and Roma were registered and deported can be determined from the surviving files, but not how many remained in Wiesbaden. According to contemporary witnesses, only Sinti lived in Wiesbaden until 1945, which means that the term Sinti must always be used until then.

During the Weimar Republic, the city was able to refer to a decree issued by the Ministry of Economics when dealing with the Sinti and, as a spa town, generally expelled both refugees and Sinti from the city. The administration acted accordingly in the late 1920s, for example when Sinti attempted to acquire land and houses. Relocations were refused on the grounds of the city's special status. Ultimately, however, it was also due to the changed jurisdiction of the Weimar Republic that Sinti were able to stay, for example in Biebrich, on the outskirts of the city and also in the old town of Wiesbaden.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the situation of the Sinti worsened here too. All measures that were decided in the Reich were generally implemented locally. Wiesbaden, for example, was one of the first cities in which racial researchers from Berlin were active, including a doctor from Wiesbaden. As early as the end of January 1938, they appeared on site and measured the Sinti living here, asked them about their family relationships and laid the foundations for the subsequent registration and deportation measures. The first police measures carried out in the spirit of the racist state in Wiesbaden were the arrests of individual Sinti in June 1938; some male Wiesbaden Sinti were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp at that time. This action was followed by the arrest of around 100 Sinti who were no longer allowed to leave Wiesbaden from October 1939. As early as 1940, most of these people were to be deported to occupied Poland, such as the Sinti from Rheinhessen. However, this deportation was temporarily suspended for unknown reasons. In contrast to other cities such as Frankfurt, Sinti children were allowed or forced to continue attending school - until they were deported to Auschwitz. On March 8, 1943, most of the Sinti living in Wiesbaden were arrested, detained in the synagogue in Friedrichstraße and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp the next day. The few Sinti who remained in Wiesbaden and were subject to exemptions were sterilized as soon as they reached the age of 12. Most of those deported to Auschwitz did not survive.

After 1945, the few survivors returned to Wiesbaden, including the musician Sylvester Lampert; sometimes relatives joined them. They were often not recognized as victims of National Socialist tyranny by municipal or Hessian authorities, as they were once again considered "gypsies", who were often denied claims for compensation until the 1960s, and in some cases until the 1980s. It was only with the political recognition of the genocide by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982 and the self-organization of the Sinti and Roma as a civil rights movement that at least public attitudes changed. After 1945, Roma also moved to Wiesbaden, for example from Poland in the 1950s. Since the 1970s, Roma from south-eastern Europe have also migrated: as "guest workers" from Yugoslavia, as civil war refugees from the disintegrating Yugoslavia in the 1990s or as EU internal migrants following the expansion of the EU.

Wiesbaden was one of the very first German cities to erect a memorial and a memorial plaque for the deported Sinti and Roma in Bahnhofstraße following a resolution by the ➞ City Council in 1992. In 2004, the exhibition "Calluses on the Soul - The History of the Persecution of Sinti and Roma in Hesse" was presented to the public for the first time in Wiesbaden City Hall.

It is not known how many Sinti and Roma live in Wiesbaden today. Corresponding data may not be collected.