Bielefeld University
“Post für die Vergangenheit. Briefe als Reaktion auf antisemitische Gewalt 1945–1990 /Letters to the Past. Citizen Responses to Antisemitic Violence” (working title)
Annika Duin is a doctoral researcher in Contemporary History at Bielefeld University. Her project analyses letters written by non-Jewish West Germans to Jews and Jewish institutions during periods of heightened public attention to antisemitism. These ego-documents allow her study to trace continuities and transformations in how antisemitism and Jewish presence were interpreted, negotiated, and emotionally processed in the postwar decades. The letters reveal a spectrum of enduring tropes, shifting stereotypes, and moral positionings, ranging from antisemitic hostility to empathetic solidarity. By combining perspectives “from below” with an approach informed by the history of emotions, the project reconstructs a nuanced panorama of societal responses—an area largely unexplored for the period between 1945 and German unification, yet central to understanding the moral history of West German society.
With academic stays in Gießen, Cologne, Paris, and Bielefeld, Annika Duin has focused on the history of “modern” antisemitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the beginning of her studies. She is currently a research associate at the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne, working on the project “The Massacres in Occupied Italy: Integrating Perpetrators’ Memories.” Since October 2026, she has been a fellow of the Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme.