Documents related to KM Ashraf in the Horst Krüger Collections at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

Com­piled by Razak Khan
Year 2019
Source Bib­lio­thek und Archiv des ZMO Berlin
DOI 10.25360/01–2022-00043

This list gives a detailed insight into doc­u­ments relat­ed to Kun­war Moham­mad Ashraf, an Indi­an Marx­ist intel­lec­tu­al and a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of Medieval Indi­an his­to­ry and cul­ture at the Hum­boldt- Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin, in the Horst Krüger papers housed in the archive of the Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent, Berlin. The col­lec­tor, Horst Krüger (17.8.1920 – 11.3.1989) stud­ied His­to­ry and Ger­man Stud­ies at the Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin. From 1957 to 1959, he was a cul­tur­al con­sul­tant at the Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic (hence­forth GDR) in India. The time spent in India inspired his life­long schol­ar­ship on the coun­try. From 1960, he start­ed work­ing on the his­to­ry of India at the Akademie der Wis­senschaften der DDR /AdW (Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of the GDR). His main research focus was on the Indi­an Nation­al Move­ment and its rela­tions with the inter­na­tion­al labor move­ment. The files relat­ed to K.M. Ashraf occu­py a dis­tinct and impor­tant space in the Krüger Papers, and can be seen as a graph­ic illus­tra­tion of entan­gled India-GDR histories.

The list is linked to the MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con arti­cle “Entan­gled Ideas: K. M Ashraf, Horst Krüger and New Indol­o­gy in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic” by Razak Khan.

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