Karl May Brief Life of a Myth-Making Writer: 1842-1912 by Eugene L
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VITA Karl May Brief life of a myth-making writer: 1842-1912 by eugene l. stelzig he most popular German author most Americans have childhood imagination. He trained as a teacher, but lost his license never heard of is Karl May, whose adventure novels have after being charged with stealing a roommate’s watch. Banned from Tsold more than 100 million copies in the German-speaking his profession, he became a con man, impersonating among others world. Though the son of poor weavers in Saxony, May neverthe- a doctor and police detective, and spent several years in jail in his less received supplementary training in music, English, and French twenties. Perhaps these fictional self-projections were the embry- in school; meanwhile, his avid reading of popular robber tales, and a onic beginnings of his becoming a best-selling novelist. visit to a puppet theater at the age of nine, no doubt stimulated his The books May wrote in his prime that made him a publish- ing phenomenon are riveting travel narratives set around the world, but mostly in the Middle East and the Wild West, where his fictional alter ego performs daring actions almost nonstop—a type of mid-nineteenth-century German Indiana Jones. These tall tales playing out in a picaresque fashion in landscapes vividly imagined in great detail, from the Rocky Mountains and American prairies to the sands of the Sahara, have been a perennial favorite of young readers in Germany and beyond. Albert Einstein ac- knowledged that “my whole adolescence stood un- der his sign. Indeed, even today, he has been dear to me in many a desperate hour.” Arnold Schwarzeneg- ger stated that May’s books “opened up my world and gave me a window to see America.” But another young Austrian was also a fan: Adolf Hitler. May spent his years behind bars as a voracious reader, using the prison library to prepare himself for a literary career. After his release, he emerged in his thirties as the From left: Ullstein bild Dtl. /Contributor/Getty Images; Public Domain Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Iconography of an author: Karl May (opposite) as his famous character Old Shatterhand, with silver rifle (ca. 1900), as famous novelist (1899), and an original edition of Winnetou (1893); and images from three of the many films based on his works (clockwise from top)—Winnetou: The Valley of Death (1968), The Last Shot (1965), and Old Shatterhand (1964), all starring Lex Barker (a former Tarzan) and Pierre Brice their friendship up to Winnetou’s untimely death editor of several journals as well as the pseud- is both highly sentimental and moving. In May’s onymous author of stories in magazines and of overarching Christian and Eurocentric vision, his pulp fiction novels. He began writing full-time in sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans in their 1875, and hit his stride as a hugely popular author inevitable decline as they war among themselves, in mid-career. The first of his famous three nov- only to be marginalized and destroyed by the in- els about Winnetou, the Mescalero Apache chief, evitable advance of the whites into their shrink- and his German friend and sometime sidekick, Old ing territories, is a tragic one. Shatterhand—May’s most heroic alter ego—ap- peared in May’s colorful and dramatic presentation in the Winnetou saga 1893, when he was 51. His novels have been translated into many lan- of “the Wild West around the year 1868,” a landscape imagined only guages, and a number of films are based on them. A Karl May Museum from his wide reading, is thoroughly inflected, not surprisingly, by the opened in Germany in 1928, there are annual Karl May festivals, and a colonial and racial assumptions of the nineteenth-century imperialist publishing house, Karl May Verlag, keeps his works in print. (None European culture that shaped his vision of a place he never visited. of this German May fervor, though, has had any notable impact on But despite these Victorian-era stereotypes haunting his novels, his the anglophone world, which has its own repository of Wild West fictional paean to his “dear, dear Winnetou” was a powerful protest fictions, from James Fenimore Cooper—a major influence on May— against what he saw as the genocidal treatment of Native Ameri- to Zane Grey and classic films and television shows. What’s more, cans. Their demise is symbolized by the tragic fate of Winnetou, some of May’s legendary “Westmen,” like Old Shatterhand and Sam that “splendid human being,” who was “eliminated…just as in short Hawkens, were actually Germans.) order the entire race will be eliminated, whose noblest son he was.” Though May’s tall tales are full of gore and gun smoke, they are also In his later years, having achieved wealth and fame with his riveting consistently informed by a Christian message: Old Shatterhand will adventure stories, May turned to writing tendentious philosophical kill only as a last resort. He prefers to shoot those trying to kill him in novels with allegorical speculations about humanity’s rise from evil the hands or knees. May’s most idealized Indian character, Winnetou, to good. In the spring of 1912, shortly before his death, he delivered dies as a Christian after a moving conversion experience: “I believe a public lecture in Vienna, “Up into the Realm [Reich] of the Noble in the Savior. Winnetou is a Christian. Farewell” are his final words. Humans,” in which he paid tribute to the peace movement and the From a contemporary perspective, this conversion seems an un- pacifist ideal of Nobel Peace Prize winner Bertha von Suttner, who called-for abdication of his Native American identity, but part of was a guest of honor. In this lecture, May declared that human worth May’s idealization of Winnetou is the intense homosocial bond be- was not defined by skin color and championed an evolutionary ideal tween him and Old Shatterhand as they become devoted and loving of a noble humanity. The young, impoverished Hitler attended the “blood brothers.” This happens after the “greenhorn” Shatterhand is lecture, but seems to have appropriated May’s pacifist “Reich” ideal captured by the Apaches on his first venture into the Wild West, as for his own infernal ideological purposes, failing to process May’s a surveyor for a railroad company planning to lay tracks across tribal powerful Christian and pacifist message against genocide. territory without permission. Nearly killed by Winnetou, Shatter- hand gains his freedom and the trust of the Apache chief and his Eugene Stelzig, Ph.D. ’72, is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English emeritus tribe through his heroic deeds and devotion to them. The story of at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Clockwise from top left: AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo; Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo; Harvard Magazine 45 TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746.