CV
Zarin Aschrafi studied History and German Literature at the universities of Munich, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Tübingen. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant in the field of provenance research at the Stadtmuseum (City Museum) Tübingen. Since 2016 she is a PhD student at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow. There she writes a dissertation on Jewish intellectuals in Frankfurt in the 1970s and 1980s.
PUBLICATIONS
Essays and Articles
Aufklärende Gegenöffentlichkeit und politische Konversionen. Der Frankfurter Club Voltaire in den 1960er Jahren, in: Dennis Göttel/ Christina Wessely (ed.), Im Vorraum. Lebenswelten Kritscher Theorie um 1969, Berlin 2019, 161-180.
Sichtbar unsichtbar. Frankfurt in den Fotografien von Abisag Tüllmann, in: Jüdische Geschichte & Kultur. Magazin des Dubnow-Instituts 2 (2018), 36–39.
»Überwinde Deine Vorurteile!« Die Gründungsgeschichte der Stuttgarter Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit, 1948–1953, in: GCJZ Stuttgart (ed.), Zeitzeichen. 70 Jahre Gesellschaft für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit Stuttgart e. V., Essen 2018, 21–206.
PROJECT OUTLINE
The research project is dedicated to a group of young intellectuals in Frankfurt, who founded the so-called "Jewish Group" in the spring of 1980. Six years later its members decided to publish the journal »Babylon. Beiträge zur jüdischen Gegenwart«. Both events mark manifestations of a specific Jewish experience in the Federal Republic at that time, which the research project aims to interpret. Hereto the investigation looks back into the 1950s, a time when a new generation of Jews reached school age. Simultaneously the inner-Jewish discourse on the shape and future of Judaism and Jewish life in the land of the murderers changed markedly. Against this backdrop the research project focuses on the recap and analysis of individual political and experiential decisions of young Jews in Germany from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s or mid-1980s. A period marked by their yearning for political participation. However, their desire to help shape current issues in German society stood in contrast to the ideas of their parents. Apart from this unresolved field of conflict, also their willingness to participate in the everyday life in Germany was in no way without contradictions. By means of several exemplary topics - such as the interpretation of the Palestinian conflict or the memory of the Shoah – the study traces the individual and collective search of these young Jews in Frankfurt. Thereto the reappraisal of Jewish family histories marked by flight, migration, and persecution as well as the generation-specific historical experience in post-war Germany serve as epistemological approach, which the project seeks to examine.