Professional Background
Sabina Ferhadbegović is a historian and Heisenberg Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz. She holds a PhD from the University of Freiburg. Dr. Ferhadbegović has held academic appointments at several institutions, including the University of Konstanz, the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, and the University of Jena.
Dr. Ferhadbegović has published on civil wars, humanitarian law, architectural history, the culture of remembrance, and Yugoslav history. She uses sources in German, French, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, English, and Russian.
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History-Munich & Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Exchange Scholar, Sabina Ferhadbegović will conduct research on the war crimes trial of Luftwaffe General Alexander Löhr, one of the few Nazi officers prosecuted in an Allied court for his role in strategic bombing. Her research focuses on Yugoslavia’s efforts to combine its national law and the Nuremberg Principles in an attempt to break new legal ground in the prosecution of crimes against humanity. This initiative aimed to establish the international criminalization of specific crimes, including the deliberate destruction of cities, the execution of hostages, and so-called reprisal killings.
This fellowship allows Dr. Ferhadbegović access to the Museum’s archival collections from the military archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Serbia related to the criminal investigation of war crimes committed on the territory of Yugoslavia during World War II. The collection includes records of criminal investigations against Löhr, as well as documents from his trial that have not yet been examined or published in academic literature.
Residency Period: September 1, 2025–December 31, 2025