Sigrid Jacobeit

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Sigrid Jacobeit (born Dorow on 29 January 1940) is a German ethnographer, ethnologist and agricultural scientist. She led the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Memorial from 1992 to 2005.

Early life and education
She was born in Johannismühle near Baruth/Mark. After finishing high school in Luckenwalde in 1958, she studied agriculture at Humboldt University in East Berlin from 1959 to 1965. Between 1971 and 1980 she ran the Museum of Agricultural Productive Forces in Wandlitz. She also completed a correspondence course in ethnography and history at Humboldt University from 1971 to 1975. In 1979 she earned a doctorate on the Working and Living Conditions of Small and Medium-Sized Women Farmers in the Nazi Era. Her habilitation followed in 1990, with a dissertation on the basic needs of nutrition and clothing in the everyday life of the German people between 1800 and 1945.

Career and research
From 1980 to 1985 she worked as a freelance author. She then taught at the Institute for Ethnography at Humboldt University as a research and senior assistant from 1986 to 1991. After reunification, university life changed and she held teaching positions at Technische Universität Berlin and the Free University of Berlin, as well as at universities in Luxembourg, Jena, Novosibirsk, Zurich and Dortmund. In 2002 Humboldt University made her an honorary professor, a title she has held while continuing her academic work.

Publications and initiatives
With her husband, historian and ethnologist Wolfgang Jacobeit, she wrote and published three volumes of Illustrated Everyday History of the German People (1986–1995) and other works, including an autobiographical piece about Wolfgang Stegemann. Her research focuses on women’s history, biographies of women in resistance to National Socialism, and a study of Osram workers in wartime production during World War II. In 1987 she and Liselotte Thomas-Heinrich published Kreuzweg Ravensbrück.

She co-founded the Interdisciplinary Women’s Research Group Ravensbrück Memorial – Free University of Berlin (IFFG), which received the Margherita von Brentano Prize in 1997. The IFFG promotes research and teaching about Ravensbrück across disciplines. In 1997 the group launched the project Victims and Survivors: Jewish Women Prisoners in Ravensbrück during and after World War II, conducted with Tel Aviv University until 1999. Jacobeit is a founding member and former chairwoman of the Folklore Section of the Gesellschaft für Ethnographie.

In 2007 she helped establish the International Summerschool at Gymnasium Carolinum in Neustrelitz, with support from colleagues and local sponsors.

Ravensbrück Memorial leadership
Jacobeit became director of the Ravensbrück Memorial in December 1992, after serving as deputy director of the Museum of Labor in Hamburg (1991–1992). She oversaw the memorial’s reorientation and redesign in cooperation with Brandenburg authorities and was a member of the International Ravensbrück Committee. She built direct links with survivors from many European countries to guide the memorial’s development. She retired in May 2005; her successor as director was Insa Eschebach. In 2005 the Ravensbrück Summer University was launched by Jacobeit and Stefan Hördler, with support from Johanna Wanka, Brandenburg’s Minister of Science, Research and Culture at the time. The Summer University later evolved into the European Summer University under Insa Eschebach.