Born: 12 October 1894, France
Died: 19 September 1963
Country most active: France
Also known as: Agnès Sabbert or Sabbagh
French art historian and ethnographer Agnès Humbert was also a member of the French Resistance during World War II.
While married and raising two sons, Humbert studied art history starting in 1929 at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school, as well as philosophy and ethnography. Divorcing in 1934, she began working as an art historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, publishing a book about painter Louis David in 1936.
Humbert documented her life from the fall of Paris in June 1940 in a diary, which was later published and translated into other languages. “I feel I will go mad, literally, if I don’t do something!” she wrote about the occupation of her country by the Germans. With museum colleagues Boris Vildé, Anatole Lewitsky, Jean Cassou and Yvonne Oddon, she formed the Groupe du musée de l’Homme, the first resistance group. The network grew quickly and would later provide information to the British.
The leaders were betrayed and arrested in April 1941; Humbert recruited a replacement to carry on before she was arrested. Although they were sentenced to death, she was kept imprisoned instead, later learning that the male leaders had been killed by firing squad while the women were sentenced to five years forced labor and sent to to Anrath prison in Germany. She worked in dangrous conditions at the Phrix rayon factory in Krefeld, where workers routinely went blind, developed terrible skin conditions and died. Liberated by the Allies in June 1945, she participated in a “Nazi hunt,” organised soup kitchens for refugees and helped start the denazification process.
After the war, Humbert chose to work at the new National Museum of Modern Art, and continued to write books about art. Her diary was published in 1946 as Notre Guerre (Our War). She received the Croix de Guerre in 1949, with silver gilt palm for heroism.