Skip Navigation

We are open today from 11 am to 6 pm.

Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Justine Dietrich

b. 1636, Rohnstock, Silesia, Germany; d. 1705, Berlin

The common name of this person is JUSTINA SIEGEMUND.

Justina Siegemund (born Dietrich) began practicing midwifery around 1659. She became town midwife at Liegnitz, Germany, in 1670. Called in to perform an emergency operation on the duchess Luise van Anhalt-Dessau, she began to serve the court as well as women in the town and surrounding villages. In 1683, she moved to Berlin and became midwife at the court of Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, attending the nobility and women in Berlin and its environs. She published Die Chur-Brandenburgische Hoff-Wehe-Mutter (The Court Midwife of the Electorate of Brandenburg) in 1690, the first German treatise on midwifery by a woman.