Handicrafts and Appropriate Technology

Cameroon Blog

Project Publications
Saturday, August 10, 2024

Our project initiator is more than that; more than 75 years of successful work are recorded in the following list:

Publications:

and compiled from the archives /SentaSillerArchiv-Landgut Stober-Cultura e.V. Nauen + ForZat-HVK-DGFK e.V. Berlin

Senta Maria Anna Siller (née Zmavc in Vienna) is a German designer, calligrapher, entrepreneur, organizer and project initiator. She was born in Vienna as one of six siblings. She is the great-niece of the illustrator Ernst Kutzer and the niece of the archaeologist Herrmann Vetters. After the war she grew up in Franconia, Germany. Between 1962 and 1988 she raised four children in Berlin. She owes her socialization to the living conditions after the Second World War. To improve her family's support, she earned money early on with paper cuttings and illustrations for newspapers in Bavarian newspapers. She studied graphic design at the State Academy of Fine Arts under Richard Blank (1901-1972, designer, calligrapher). As a graphic designer she received commissions in the areas of exhibition and trade fair construction, children's clothing, toys and book illustration. Further studies followed at the Technical University of Berlin, where she studied archaeology, philosophy, education and art history. She wrote her dissertation on the life and work of Carl Otto Czeschka. At the same time, she ran a children's clothing retail company and, as student director at the Berlin Lette-Verein, headed training in photography, graphic design and fashion design.

Since the 1970s, Siller has been collaborating with N. Pintsch in the German Society for the Promotion of Culture (DGFK, also in Berlin), a volunteer-run and privately financed association for the promotion of culture in various foreign projects. She developed projects in which scientific research results on traditional culture were to be used to develop income-generating measures for women in rural areas and to stem the rural exodus.

Her work has been exhibited at home and abroad and has been recognized with awards and medals. What is special about her work is its altruism and intercultural cooperation. She continues to work on a voluntary basis (Cultura e.V. on the Stober estate in Gross Behnitz/Nauen.

Labels: Camcatbam, Dr Senta Siller, Spathcameroon