Senta Dinglreiter

Senta Dinglreiter (31 March 1893 – 14 April 1969) was a German writer. She was a convinced National Socialist and in the 1930s and 1940s mainly wrote travelogues and novels about the former German colonies.

Life Dinglreiter was born in 1893 in Fürstenzell in Lower Bavaria. She grew up on a farm and while already in her youth she wanted to travel the world, she had to help out at her family farm and had little access to formal education. At the age of 19, she moved to Munich and began an apprenticeship as a cook. She started to do photography in order to be able to finance travelling and also tried opening a photography studio in Munich. In 1925, she traveled to the United States and stayed several months in New York, Chicago and Denver. She worked as a secretary in an engineering company in Chicago and as a maid in Denver. Afterwards she continued traveling to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

She entered the Nazi Party on 9 August 1926, several years before Adolf Hitler's rise to power. She gave speeches about her travels in Africa for the Nazi party and wrote for the Nazi magazines SA-Mann and Der völkische Beobachter. In the 1950s, she resumed publishing travel reports, but also especially novels in the Heimatroman genre depicting farm life in rural Bavaria. She died in 1969 in Munich. Her urn was transferred to a cemetery in her home municipality Fürstenzell on the 40th anniversary of her death. Fürstenzell named a street after her.

Themes Many of Dinglreiter's texts are seen as representatives of German colonial literature. Several of her books are travelogues of former German colonies in Africa and Asia, among them Wann kommen die Deutschen endlich wieder? (1935), Ein Mädel reist durch Afrika (1935) and So sah ich unsere Südsee (1939). The novel Deutsche Frau in Afrika (1940, "German woman in Africa") describes the perspective of a Bavarian woman in German South West Africa and German East Africa between 1913 and 1938. She discriminates against Jewish, Black and indigenous people, but also against Chinese and communists. Indigenous people in her works are depicted as "childish" along colonial racist ideologies. Often, indigenous people are described as cannibals. Kebe-Nguema writes that Black men are framed as a danger for white women, influenced by the racist campaign Black Horror on the Rhine. Jewish people are seen as a danger for the German nation and for the German settlers in the colonies. In So sah ich unsere Südsee she writes that Chinese communists would want "the chaos on Earth and the absolute submission of humanity".

Her work after the fall of the Nazi regime consists of novels set on the farm in Dinglreit in Fürstenzell that she grew up on, describing the lives of three generations living on the farm in the novels Brunnöd I und Brunnöd II sowie Da Burgamoasta. The novels document the dialect that was spoken in Fürstenzell at the time.

Selected works

Deutsches Mädel auf Fahrt um die Welt, Leipzig 1932. Wann kommen die Deutschen endlich wieder? Eine Reise durch unsere Kolonien in Afrika, Leipzig 1935. Ein Mädel reist durch Afrika: Selbsterlebtes im schwarzen Erdteil. 1935. So sah ich unsere Südsee. 1939. Deutsche Frau in Afrika, Berlin 1940. Im Lande der Pharaonen, Berlin 1941. Junge Generation, Berlin 1941 Ich besah mir die Welt, Biberach a.d. Riss 1954. Waldzirkus Kastorelli, Augsburg 1956. Da Burgamoasta, Passau 1957. Brunnöd 1, Passau 1957. Brunnöd 2, Passau 1957. Petzi der Bär, Berlin 1962.