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Frieda von Bülow (*October 12, 1857 in Berlin; † March 12, 1909 in Jena) was a German author and colonial activist.

Life
Frieda von Bülow was born on October 12, 1857 into an old noble family. Her father, Hugo von Bülow was a Prussian consul, which is why she spent some of her childhood in Smyrna (today Izmir, Turkey). After her father died in 1869, she was very close to her uncle Baron Thankmar von Münchhausen, who also served as a diplomat in Smyrna and later in Jerusalem. When Frieda was nine years old, the family moved back to Germany, into the Herrnhuter pietist community (Moravian Church) in Neudietendorf, Thuringia. The Hernhuter pietists had been involved in colonial work since the 1730s, and were running the oldest German overseas Protestant mission.

Frieda had a very close relationship to her sister Margarete. In 1881, the two sisters together with their third sister Sophie and their grandmother moved back to Berlin. There, the sisters were trained as teachers, which at the time was extraordinary; women usually did not receive a proper training. Frieda was friends with politically active women such as Helene Lange, who used to be her teacher and would later become the leader of the bourgeois women’s movement.

The death of her sister Margarete in 1884 marked a significant change in Frieda’s life. She started to develop ideas about female heroism and male weakness, which would later determine much of her writing. Instead of getting married she travelled a lot, and in 1885 started to develop a strong interest in German colonialism as she met Carl Peters in Berlin.

First trip to Africa
When Frieda von Bülow met Peters, he was one of the most outspoken proponents of establishing a German colony overseas and was one of the co-founders of the Society for German Colonisation. Together with Martha and Eva von Pfeil, Peters and Bülow founded the Evangelical Missionary Society for German East Africa in May 1886. Martha von Pfeil and Frieda von Bülow were the only two women next to eighteen men on the society’s board. The aim of the society was to set up schools, hospitals and churches in the colonies. In order to receive funds, the society hosted different events, balls and bazars, many of them at Bülow’s house in Berlin.

In October 1886, Bülow, the Pfeil sisters and eleven other women formed a new association, that pursued a more secular ideology than the Evangelical Missionary Society: the German-National Women’s League. This disagreement about the importance of Christian values in their work often led to conflicts between the two associations, and caused Pfeil and Bülow to be expelled from the board of the Evangelical Missionary Society in April 1887, so that the two associations were now rivals in establishing nursing in the German colonies in East Africa.

In May 1887, Bülow and Bertha Wilke left to German East Africa by order of the German-National Women’s League and the Evangelical Missionary Society, respectively. Once she had arrived in the colony, Frieda von Bülow spent much of her time accompanying Carl Peters on diplomatic occasions, during excursions and social events. Her reputation suffered significantly from supporting Peters, who was harshly criticized for his actions and behaviour in German East Africa and who had to go back to Germany in January 1888. Furthermore, she did not fit the image of a typical, self-sacrificing nurse and was ultimately in absentia removed from office. After a serious malaria illness, Bülow left for Bombay in May 1888, then joined her family in Freiburg and travelled back to Berlin. Shortly afterwards, she met with Martha von Pfeil and the board of the German-National Women’s League to discuss her case. As they were not able to reach some sort of agreement, Frieda von Bülow’s connection to the League broke off. She then worked independently for the colonialist cause. Martha von Pfeil was eager to remove all traces of Bülow in the League and therefore gave it a new statute and name in April 1888: the German Women’s Association for Nursing in the Colonies.

Second trip to Africa
Frieda’s brother Albrecht earlier had bought the island Yambe, close to Tanga, Tanzania, and was running a plantation and a quarry. In 1893, he was killed, and Frieda decided to take over his business. She wanted to be the first woman to lead a plantation and wrote about her experiences and her fascination with colonial farm life, which would become subject of some of her later works.

At that time, the new German chancellor Leo von Caprivi was aiming to enhance Germany’s influence in the African colonies by pursuing an aggressively imperialistic foreign policy. Private businesses like Frieda von Bülow’s plantation did not quite fit into this strategy and Frieda von Bülow had to sell her plantation to the German East Africa Company. She then returned to Berlin in early 1894.

Writing
In her articles, she often mixed her personal experience with topographic, geographic and ethnographic reports, and then sent these back to Germany, so that they would be published in journals and magazines. She was advertising for the colonial cause, but she avoided any sort of political discussion. Most of these texts were directed at a female-patriotic audience, which she would directly address and thereby let them be part of her experience.

Similarly, to many other colonialists at that time, Frieda von Bülow clearly expressed racist views about the African, Indian and Arab people living and working in German East Africa, which contributed to the creation of her national-patriotic understanding.

Frieda von Bülow is regarded as the estbalisher of the genre of the German colonial novel. Her writing was mainly concerned with three aspects; radical nationalism, women’s freedom and men’s violence. Not only did she write about her personal experiences in articles, but she also processed much of that in her fictional novels.

Works
An approximate translation of the titles is provided in brackets.

Books

 * 1889: Reiseskizzen und Tagebuchblätter aus Deutsch-Ostafrika (Travel Sketches)
 * 1890 – novel: Am Andern Ende der Welt (On the Other End of the World)
 * 1891: Der Konsul. Vaterländischer Roman aus Unseren Tagen (The Consul)
 * 1892: Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Novellen (German-East African Novels)
 * 1892: Ludwig von Rosen. Eine Erzählung aus Zwei Welten (Ludwig von Rosen. A Story from Two Worlds)
 * 1892 – novel: Margarete und Ludwig (Margarete and Ludwig)
 * 1896: Tropenkoller. Episode aus dem deutschen Kolonialleben (Tropical Rage. Episodes from German Colonial Life)
 * 1897 – short novels: Einsame Frauen (Lonely Women)
 * 1897 – novel: Kara
 * 1898 – novel: Anna Stern
 * 1898 – two short novels: Wir von Heute (Us Nowadays)
 * 1899: Im Land der Verheißung. Ein Deutscher Kolonial-Roman (In the Land of Promise. A German Colonial Novel)
 * 1900 – novel: Abendkinder (Evening Children)
 * 1901 – novel: Im Hexenring. Eine Sommergeschichte vom Lande (In the Witch Ring. A Summer Story from the Countryside)
 * 1902 – novel: Hüter der Schwelle (Guardian of the Border)
 * 1902 – two short novels: Die stilisierte Frau. Sie und Er. (The Stylized Woman. Her and Him)
 * 1903 – novel: Allein Ich Will! (Alone I Want!)
 * 1904 – novel: Im Zeichen der Ernte. Italienisches Landleben von Heute (Under the Sign of Harvest. Italian Life on the Countryside Nowadays)
 * 1905 – novel: Irdische Liebe. Eine Alltagsgeschichte (Earthly Love. An Everyday Story)
 * 1906 – novel: Die Tochter (The Daughter)
 * 1907: Das Portugiesenschloss. Erzählung von der Ostafrikanischen Küste (The Portuguese Castle. Stories from the East African Coast)
 * 1908 – novel: Wenn Männer Schwach Sind (When Men are Weak)
 * 1909 – short novel: Freie Liebe (Free Love)
 * 1909 – novel: Die Schwestern. Geschichte einer Mädchenjugend (The Sisters. Stories of a Youth of Girls)
 * 1910 – novel: Frauentreue (Women Loyalty)

Essays & Articles

 * Alte und Neue Schönheit (Old and New Beauty)
 * Das Weib in Seiner Geschlechtsindividualität (The Woman in her Identity of Gender)
 * Ein Mann über Bord! (A Man Overboard!)
 * Lear-Patriotismus (Lear Patriotism)
 * 1888: Eine Unblutige Eroberungsfahrt an der Ostafrikanischen Küste (A Bloodless Journey of Conquest on the East African Coast)
 * 1898/99: Männerurtheil über Frauendichtung (Men’s Judgement on Women’s Poetry)
 * 1898: Emile Zola über die Moderne Frau (Emile Zola about the Modern Woman)