Seidel, Ina (Halle, 1885-1974, Ebenhausen nr. Starnberg, Bavaria), poet and novelist, was the daughter of a doctor and niece of the writer Heinrich Seidel, whose son Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel (1876-1945, a pastor and writer) she married in 1907. She spent her childhood in Brunswick and, after her father's suicide, in Marburg, and her formative years in Munich; after her marriage she lived in Berlin and in Eberswalde during her husband's nine-year incumbency there (1914-23). When he retired in 1934 they moved to Starnberg, where she spent her remaining years.
Her poems appeared in the collections Gedichte (1914), Neben der Trommel her (1915), Weltinnigkeit (1918), and Die tröstliche Begegnung (1932). Her Gesammelte Gedichte appeared in 1949, 1955, and 1958. But she is best known for her novels, whose most notable feature is their organic progression, often marked by the reappearance of characters in more than one. Her first novel, Das Haus zum Monde (1916), was complemented in 1923 by Sterne der Heimkehr to form a diptych in which decadence gives way to moral awareness; in 1952 they were reissued as Das Tor der Frühe. Das Labyrinth (1922) is based on the life of Georg Forster. The social problems and spiritual conflicts generated by the 1914-18 War are evoked in Brömseshof (1928), a sombre novel depicting the inability of a returning soldier, Conrad Brömses, to keep up the tradition of the farm which is his family's inheritance. Das Wunschkind (1930), Seidel's best-known and most successful work, transfers similar preoccupations with tradition and change to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, adding the theme of motherhood and the stresses to which it is exposed in times of crisis. 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 modern feminists. In Der Weg ohne Wahl (1933) a brother and sister are caught in the labyrinth of life through which compassion and idealism finally enable them to find their way. Her masterpiece, Lennacker (1938), gives a fictional conspectus of the history of the Lutheran Church by focusing on times of intense moral crisis. Its sequel Das unverwesliche Erbe (1954) also has close links with Das Wunschkind and, by concentrating on the Lennacker women rather than the men, portrays the religious division of Germany as a positive force in its historical and cultural development.
Unser Freund Peregrin (1940) introduces as narrator a character who also appears in Seidel's last novel, Michaela. It centres on the life of three children, two of them orphans, who build a fantasy world around the figure of Peregrin, a poet long dead who was one of their ancestors and is modelled on Novalis. Michaela (1959) reflects, with limited success, the situation of a group of educated Germans under the National Socialist regime.
Seidel's Novellen appeared in a number of collections, including Hochwasser (1921), Der vergrabene Schatz (1928), Spuk in Wassermanns Haus (1936), Die Geschichte einer Frau Berngruber and Die Versuchung des Briefträgers Federweiß (both 1953), Dresdner Pastorale (1962), Quartett (1963), and Die alte Dame und der Schmetterling (1964). Her two outstanding Novellen are Die Fürstin reitet (1926), set in the Russia of Catherine the Great, and Die Fahrt in den Abend (1955), in which a doctor, acquiring a car on his retirement, embarks on a journey in which he rediscovers past happiness as he travels towards death.
Seidel's essays on literature are contained in Dichter, Volkstum und Sprache (1934), and her studies of three Romantic writers (Brentano, Bettina von Arnim, and L. J. (Achim) von Arnim) were published as Drei Dichter der Romantik (1944). Her essays on other topics appeared in Die Vogelstube (1946) and Frau und Wort (1965). Meine Kindheit und Jugend (1935), Drei Städte meiner Jugend (1960). Vor Tau und Tag (1962), and Lebensbericht 1885-1923 (1970), are autobiographical.
