Drupa Prize 2024 awarded to Daria Vakhrushova

The Drupa Prize, that comes with Euro 6,000 prize money, was presented by  Erhard Wienkamp (managing director at Messe Düsseldorf), Dr Andreas Pleßke (chairman of the Board/CEO Koenig & Bauer and chairman of the Drupa committee), Prof Dr Anja Steinbeck (rector of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), Prof Dr Roger Lüdeke (vice-rector of the faculty of Philosophy at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) and PhD supervisor Prof Dr Efrat Gal-Ed to the award winner in a formal ceremony on 6 June 2024 at Drupa.  

The PhD thesis awarded with summa cum laude bears the title “Rote Juden: Der jiddisch-sowjetische Kulturentwurf 1917-1934” (The Red Jews: Yiddish-Soviet Cultural Design 1917-1934). In her work, Daria Vakhrushova combines cultural, literary and linguistic approaches to explore a topic that has received little attention to date: the Yiddish-Soviet cultural design between the October Revolution of 1917 and the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, a high point in the consolidation process of Soviet cultural policy, which was accompanied by the first tightening of nationality policy and repression.  

The justification given by the Faculty of Philosophy at Heinrich Heine University for nominating Daria Vakhrushova for the Drupa Prize primarily focuses on the wealth of material she has reviewed, some of which has been analysed for the first time, and on her remarkable mastery in combining theory and methodology. The commission is convinced that the excellently written work should be made accessible to a wide audience and is therefore an ideal choice for the drupa prize, which comes with a printing costs grant.

Daria Vakhrushova is a cultural and literary scholar. After completing her diploma in translation and translation theory at the NA Dobrolyubov State Linguistic University of Nizhny Novgorod (Russia) (2008-2013), she successfully completed a master’s degree in Yiddish language, literature and culture at Heinrich Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf from 2013 to 2016. In the same year, she began her doctoral studies in the Faculty of Philosophy in the same subject and completed her thesis “Rote Juden: Der jiddisch-sowjetische Kulturentwurf 1917-1934” in October 2022 after her successful viva achieving the overall rating summa cum laude. Daria Vakhrushova has served as a Yiddish lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich since 2022. 

Since 1978, Messe Düsseldorf has awarded the Drupa Prize, that comes with Euro 6,000 prize money, for an outstanding thesis written in the Faculty of Philosophy of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. The prize money is used for the publication and dissemination of the award-winning work in the humanities. The Drupa Prize is awarded by a panel of experts comprising the rectorate and vice-rectorate of Heinrich Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf, the Chairman of the drupa Committee and the CEO of Messe Düsseldorf.