ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contrast between a German-nationalistic self-identity, that is, a German-patriotic 'one's', and a native alterity – a 'Them' – in East Africa at the beginning of German colonial rule, as this contrast is represented in her texts, Bilow's under-researched autobiographical writings are more profitable than her novels. Bilow's writings from German East Africa, which encompasses the area occupied by the states of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, are the first written expressions of a white, German woman direct from the German African colonies. In Frieda von Bulow autobiographical texts from German East Africa the term 'race' hardly features at all, despite numerous descriptions of the physical characteristics of representatives of East African ethnicities. But a self-defined cultural identity of white Germanness is still clearly contrasted with a stereotypical and collective definition of East African ethnicities by the German observer.
