38 El Palacio

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By tomas Jaehn
T
his year marks the one-hundredth
anniversary of the death of the famous
western Americana writer Karl May
(1842–1912). May (pronounced “my”),
one of the most read German authors
in history, is known for his adventure
stories, set just about everywhere on the
globe, and is the undisputed king of western Americana writings
in the German-speaking market. More than 200 million copies of
his works in over forty languages (including the artificial languages
Esperanto and Volapük) have been sold since the late 1890s, and
yet he is virtually unheard of in the United States. May wrote over
one hundred books—autobiographies, biographies, social treatises,
and adventure novels that take place in several continents. But he
is best known for two fictitious characters in his American West
tales: Winnetou and Old Shatterhand.
So, who is Karl May, and why is such a popular writer unknown
in the country whose West he made so popular?
May was born on February 25, 1842, into a poor family of weavers
in Germany. To escape poverty, he became a teacher, but serious
brushes with the law—theft, fraud, and impersonation of medical
doctors, lawyers, and police officers—resulted in the revocation
of his teaching license, and he repeatedly served time in nearby
penitentiaries. In 1874, released from prison yet again, he turned
to writing, and his colportage essays (trashy contract publications)
earned him financial stability. Eventually his adventure stories
found themselves in serial format in magazines such as Der
deutsche Hausschatz, and after numerous other publications, he
began publishing his Winnetou series in 1893.
May paired Winnetou, the Apache chief, with his German blood
brother, Old Shatterhand (Old Shurehand and Old Firehand in
other narratives), and described their adventures from Mexico to
Yellowstone Park, from the Great Plains to the Llano Estacado, and
in New Mexico. His western America stories, and particularly
his Winnetou and Old Shatterhand stories, become immediately
popular, partly because, as Gerald Nash once noted, they are logical
successors to the romantic sagas of German heroes, like Siegfried
and Thor, “who battled evil to win out for truth.” The narratives are
straightforward struggles between good and evil, with a heavy touch
of Germanic superiority and plenty of Christian brotherhood messages, along with detailed descriptions of landscapes and scenery.
To endear a German audience to Apaches—Germans disliked
(and to some extent still do) nomadic behavior, often associated
with thievery, shiftlessness, and dishonesty—May transformed
Opposite: Winnetou, with his trusted Silberbüchse, and his friend Old Shatterhand
observe a careless enemy in the canyon below them in this cover painting from
Winnetou III. Courtesy Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.
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To convince his readers of the truthfulness of his adventures, Karl May often
provided “proof” by posing in Old Shatterhand garb. This ca. 1890s cabinet
card shows “Dr.” Karl May in a studio setting with Winnetou’s rifle.
Courtesy Karl-May-Museum, Radebeul, Germany.
them from a nomadic tribe into a sedentary pueblo or cliff-dwelling
people living along the Pecos River, south of today’s Roswell. He
also made Chief Winnetou into a Europe-educated Native.
Despite taking such literary liberties in his portrayal of Native
Americans, May was familiar with western American culture
and history. His large personal library in Radebeul, near Dresden,
contains ethnographic books about Native Americans, dictionaries
of Native languages, geographical surveys of the American
West, and travel descriptions of the Rocky Mountains—works
by George M. Wheeler, George Catlin, Robert von Schlagintweit,
Balduin von Möllhausen, probably Josiah Gregg, and, of course,
James Fenimore Cooper.
May’s portrayal of Native Americans in New Mexico and the West
acknowledged their distinct ethnicity, which was unfortunately
doomed. In the preface to Winnetou, May claimed that “the Red
Man possesses no lesser right for existence than the White Man
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and should have the opportunity to develop societal and state skill
in his own manners.” Through his characters he made clear that
“the evil influence of the white men [particularly Anglo-Americans,
never Germans] … led the noble redskin astray.”
May filled his stories with the superior qualities of the Teutonic
race, whose protagonists shoot better than the Yankees, track better
than the Native Americans, and teach the “noble savages” German
morals and idealism. In Winnetou, Old Shatterhand teaches
immigrant Germans, Anglo-Americans, and Native Americans
Teutonic wisdom and manners. In Krüger Bei, Winnetou visits
Old Shatterhand in Germany, and in Der Ölrpinz, even the chief
of the Navajos speaks German fluently. “So thoroughly has May
transplanted German customs to America,” one of the few American
scholars who has written about May pointed out, “that the United
States often resembles a German colony. May’s western heroes
drink German beer, listen to German music, sing German songs
and read (authentic) German newspapers.”
In short, ideals replace authenticity in May’s American West
and Southwest. May engaged in what Ray Allen Billington called
the “Europeanizing” of Native Americans, “endowing them with
the traits and ideals drawn from Western civilization, while they
still possess the natural nobility that made them valuable
allies.” What with the German ambiance and landscapes extra­
ordinaire, it is no wonder these adventurous narratives became
and remain popular.
Some of the popularity of May’s western narratives derived
from the notion that these escapades were true. Indeed, he
convincingly elaborated on geographic, ethnographic, and
social matters, cultivating the impression that his tales were
genuine. Early on, he made the claim that he, Karl May, was Old
Shatterhand and was able to tell such thrilling stories because
they had all been experienced firsthand. The fights, the peace
efforts, the pursuits, the big game hunts—all were authenticated
by the master storyteller himself. And yet nothing could have
been farther from the truth.
As if to solidify the stories’ authenticity, he pointed out that he
spoke several European languages, as well as Arabic and Native
American dialects. May might have known some fundamental
English, if that, but did not speak any foreign language. To
perpetuate the myth, he chose to narrate his undertakings in
the first person. May frequently distributed images of himself
in western outfits and filled his “Villa Shatterhand” with trinkets
and memorabilia from the various countries he presumably had
visited. Furthermore, since Germans so often equate academic
titles with expertise, he printed business cards with the erroneous
“Dr. Karl May.”
This collection of cover art used by the Karl-May-Verlag (publishing house), founded in Radebeul in 1913, displays some of the geographical and cultural spread
of Karl May’s works, with adventures in the American West, Mexico, South America, Turkey, and the Near East. Courtesy Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.
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At times, he spun a yarn to reassure the reader of his truthfulness—for instance, the one about Winnetou’s famous rifle,
Silberbüchse. In Old Shurehand III, during a trip to Winnetou’s
grave in Wyoming, he interrupts a grave-robbing attempt by a
band of Sioux. With his friends, Old Shurehand chases them
away and unearths Silberbüchse. Figuring that the Sioux were
after the rifle, he takes it back to Germany for safekeeping.
Never at a loss, May even produced photographs of himself
in western garb (albeit clearly in a studio setting), standing or
crouching attentively with a rifle in hand. Silberbüchse (along
with Old Shatterhand’s Bärentöter [Bear Killer] and Henrystutzen [Henry Carbine]) has been in Radebeul ever since and
is on display at the Karl-May-Museum to this day.
Alas, some time after Karl May’s death on March 30, 1912,
the rifle was found to have been fabricated by a local gunsmith
in Radebeul. It never saw New Mexico, and, contrary to its
sure-shot reputation, it never even discharged a shot: it was a
prop without a proper bolt mechanism.
D
espite May’s antics and pretenses, despite his
criminal background and his taste for pulp, he
successfully produced thrilling and adventurous tales that continue to transport readers to
faraway countries with unknown customs—
and he did all this from a desk at home. “He travels the world,” a
recent biographer points out, “without making one step outside
his front door.” Until much later in life, Karl May never visited
the countries he wrote about—and then, moving from hotel
to hotel, his exploits were not nearly as audacious as those of his
fictitious characters. He visited the United States only once, in
1908, traveling only as far west as Buffalo, New York.
Still, Winnetou and May’s alter ego, Old Shatterhand, shape
millions of readers’ view of the American West. May’s works continue to appeal to Germans long after his death, and his popular
allure, German newspapers have maintained, is greater than
that of any other German author between Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and Thomas Mann, outshining famous German writers
like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertolt Brecht. The cult
status of May (dubbed by Der Spiegel “the Pop Star of Saxony”) and
his Villa Shatterhand have been compared to that of Elvis Presley
and Graceland. His message of German nationalism and Protestant
Christian values, and his emphasis on chivalry, manliness, and
adventure, still appeal to the German audience.
Although they may not be as popular as they once were,
Winnetou and Old Shatterhand’s adventures still charm. And
against the unlikely possibility that Karl May’s heroes will indeed
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Above: A distinguished-looking Karl May at the height of his career in 1906.
Courtesy Karl-May-Museum, Radebeul, Germany.
Opposite: In 1908, at age sixty-six, Karl May made his only trip to the United
States, visiting New York City, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo. May is seated in the
first row of this Buffalo tour bus. Courtesy Karl-May-Museum.
ride into their happy hunting grounds and be forgotten, we have
the exploits of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand on Germany’s big
screen. While early productions go back to the silent-movies
era of the 1920s, the 1960s creations rejuvenated Karl May’s
popularity, although the films are often only mildly reminiscent
of his novels: a French actor as Winnetou and an American
actor as Old Shatterhand battle Mexican bandits, marauding
Indian tribes, and Anglo-American thugs in the former
Yugoslavia (Croatia), which substitutes for New Mexico and the
American West. These films keep May’s work alive to this day.
Germans’ obsession with everything Native American has been
widely known for decades, and Karl May festivals in old quarries
continue annually in Bad Segeberg and elsewhere.
But to get back to the opening question of why Karl May is
unknown in the United States. It may be partly because in the
United States, the Wild West is within reach for those who want
to see it for themselves. Additionally, in the United States May was
easily eclipsed by the likes of James Fenimore Cooper, Zane Grey,
and Larry McMurtry. The United States did not take readily to a
German writer holed up in his fantasy world, gaining his
knowledge from second-hand sources and transferring it with farfetched fantasy onto paper. It did not need a writer of westerns
who inconsistently preaches pacifism, criticizes Anglo-American
culture, and views Native Americans from within his own Weltbild.
Karl May is clearly the most influential German writer to have
commented on the American West and on Native and Anglo cultures.
His aficionados and literary critics waver about his impact, his
importance, and his stature in literature, calling him everything
from narcissist to maniac to imposter to genius. The fact remains
that Winnetou and Old Shatterhand shaped millions of readers’
perception of the American West and continued to do so even
after May’s criminal past became public knowledge and his “travel
narratives” were debunked as products of his imagination.
For those of us who grew up on his books and read about
his adventures on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains,
May’s literary importance and his checkered past are relatively
irrelevant. We want to see the places he writes about, even if they
don’t exist. Walking the plaza in Santa Fe on a warm summer day,
listening to all the languages spoken there, I sometimes wonder
how many of these tourists, having read Karl May’s western
Americana stories or seen their cinematic versions, came here
searching for Winnetou or Old Shatterhand. Sources: There is no English biography of Karl May. For this article I used Ray Allen Billington’s
Land of Savagery, Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier (1981);
and Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections, edited by Colin Calloway, Gerd
Gemünden, and Susanne Zantop (2002). Richard Cracroft, in an older article, introduces the
American audience to “The American West of Karl May” (American Quarterly, January 1967).
Other studies that I consulted are Karl May, by Hans Wollschläger (1976); “Old Shatterhand,
das bin ich”: Die Lebensgeschichte des Karl May, by Frederik Hetmann (2000); Karl May:
Untertan, Hochstapler, Übermensch, by Rüdiger Schaper (2011); and Karl May im Llano
Estacado, edited by Meredith McClain and Reinhold Wolff (2004).
Tomas Jaehn is a historian who works as archivist and librarian at the Fray Angélico
Chávez History Library at the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors.
He curated the exhibition Tall Tales of the Wild West: The Stories of Karl May, which
opens at the New Mexico History Museum on November 18, 2012.
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