Sabine Jessner Sehlinger (1924-2019)

Sabine Luise Marianne Jessner Sehlinger died in Indianapolis on November 3, 2019.  She was a professor of French history, the first woman president of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences, president of the Swiss-American Historical Society, several times president of the Indianapolis Wellesley Club, and the author of articles in historical journals and a biography of Edouard Herriot.

Born in Breslau, Germany, in 1924 to a Prussian father and a Swiss mother, Sabine was reared in Breslau and in Bern and Neuchâtel, Switzerland.  With her parents and brother she came to New York in 1941.  After graduating from Wellesley College and Columbia University, she taught at Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Brooklyn Colleges and Kent State University and then for twenty years at Indiana University, Indianapolis, where she also was an early Director of Women’s Studies. She and her husband Peter J. Sehlinger, a history colleague at Indiana University, Indianapolis, lived in Indianapolis and Key Colony Beach in the Florida Keys following her retirement in 1989.

Peter J. Sehlinger, Indiana University, Indianapolis