Background
Ina Seidel was born on September 15, 1885, in Halle an der Saale, Germany. She was the daughter of Hermann and Emmy (Loesevitz) Seidel.
Germany
Ina Seidel
Germany
Ina Seidel
Ina Seidel was born on September 15, 1885, in Halle an der Saale, Germany. She was the daughter of Hermann and Emmy (Loesevitz) Seidel.
In her teens, Seidel lived with family members in Marburg and later in Munich. In 1907 she married and the following year gave birth to her first child. The delivery was a difficult one and left Seidel disabled and depressed. As a recuperative strategy, she began writing poetry. She and her husband, lived first in Berlin and then in Eberswald for the next several years. It was during the years of World War I that she met with her first successes as a writer when the Berlin publisher Fleischel released her Gedichte in 1914.
Another volume of verse, Neben der Trommelher: Gedichte was published in 1915, and established Seidel as a rising young writer, albeit one whose lyrical poems held fast to decidedly patriotic or feminine themes. Her first novel, Das Haus zum Monde, appeared in 1917. At the time, Seidel was keenly interested in mysticism, and the novel’s plot revolves around the idea of reincarnation. She continued to write poetry and had excellent success with the novella format, but her next major work would firmly establish her reputation in both Germany and abroad. This 1922 novel, Das Labyrinth, would also be the first of her pair of works to appear in English translation. Translated and published in English ten years later in 1932, The Labyrinth earned mixed reviews from across the Atlantic. Some critics found it a confusing and unnecessarily complex.
Das Wunschkind was published in 1930, but Seidel had written several other works in the interim years. She and her family moved back to Berlin in 1923, but her spouse left his clergy post in 1934 after the new Nazi leadership placed certain demands upon priests and pastors. Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel then became a writer himself, and they settled outside of Munich on the lake resort of Starnberg. The Wish Child appeared in English translation in 1935, and furthered Seidel’s reputation as a contemporary German writer. Here, as so often in her fiction, Seidel’s female characters are strong and resilient, a feature which accounts for her continuing popularity during the National Socialist period and for her neglect by mainstream modem feminists. In English translation, The Wish Child earned mixed reviews. Some critics deemed it too long and found the large cast of characters confusing, but a Catholic World contributor termed the book a masterpiece of sustained craftsmanship and imagination.
Seidel wrote several other books before the 1938 publication of what scholars consider one of her best works, the Lennacker: Das Each einer Heimkehr. The work is essentially a history of the Lutheran church in Germany, though told through a fictional framework.
Seidel, who up to this point had published over two dozen volumes of fiction, poetry, short stories, or criticism. became artistically reclusive during the Nazi era, and wrote almost nothing new during the war years. However, she did write poetry for Adolf Hitler on the occasion of his birthday, an act for which she was later criticized.
After the war years, Seidel resumed her career as a novelist, poet, and short-story writer. She also edited volumes of poetry by other German writers, and published several titles concerning a trio of German Romantic poets: Achim von Amim, Bettina von Amim, and Clemens Brentano. She also wrote a sequel to Lennacker, Das unverwescliche Erhe, which appeared in 1954. Lennacker's grandmother converted from her Catholic religion to her husband's Protestant faith, but Seidel tries to show that such changes, unmotivated by a true spiritual desire, are unsuccessful. The book portrays the religious division of Germany as a positive force in its historical and cultural development.
Seidel did attempt to come to terms with the Nazi era in her 1959 novel Michaela: Aufzeichnungen des Juergen Brook. Again, a pastor character plays a leading role in this portrayal of the German middle class's conflicted relationship with the values and actions of the Third Reich. Although the work has been criticized as too idyllic and for failing to come to terms with the questions it raises, the final image of the novel may serve as a supreme example of Seidel's work and world view.
The prolific number of works Seidel wrote, during a career that spanned six decades, are considered by scholars as deeply illustrative of the cultural values of her world. In a way they also serve to depict Germany’s reverence for its past and the meaningfulness to them of traditional German values - the national characteristics that helped pave the way for both the excesses of the Nazi era and West Germany's decades of postwar prosperity.
Ina was a member of Prussian Academy of Arts and Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.
Ina married Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel, a minister and writer, in 1907. Thay had one daughter and a son.