Karl May
Encyclopedia
Karl Friedrich May was a popular German
writer
, noted mainly for adventure novels set in the American Old West
, (best known for the characters of Winnetou
and Old Shatterhand
) and similar books set in the Orient
and Middle East
(with Kara Ben Nemsi
and Hadschi Halef Omar
). In addition, he wrote stories set in his native Germany
, in China
and in South America
. May also has written poetry and a play, and composed music; he also was proficient with several musical instruments. Many of his works were filmed
, adapted for the stage, processed to audio dramas or transcribed into comics
. A highly imaginative and fanciful writer, May never visited the exotic places featured in his stories until late in life, when the clash between fiction and reality led to a complete change in his work.
Asteroid
348 May
is named in his honor.
, Schönburgische Rezessherrschaften (later part of the Kingdom of Saxony
). He was the fifth child out of fourteen, nine of whom died within several months of birth. According to his autobiography
, he suffered from visual impairment shortly after birth and regained his eyesight after treatment at the age of five. Possibly a lack of vitamin A led to night blindness
, which got worse.
During his school time he got private music and composition lessons. According to his own story he earned money for this at the age of twelve at a skittle alley
, where he was able to hear the coarse words of the players.
, but was excluded in 1859, because he embezzled six candles. After a petition he was allowed to continue his education in Plauen
. His career as a teacher ended abruptly after only a few weeks when he was accused by his roommate of stealing a pocket watch. Therefore he had to be in gaol in Chemnitz
for six weeks and his license to teach was revoked permanently.
During the following years he tried to earn a living by giving private education, writing tales, composing and declaiming. But these did not secure his livelihood. As consequence he started thefts and frauds. He was sentenced to four years in a workhouse
. From 1865 to 1869 he was in gaol in the workhouse Osterstein Castle
(Zwickau
). Because of good behaviour he became administrator of the prison’s library and had the chance to read much, including travel literature. He planned to become an author and made a list of titles of works he planned to write, named Repertorium C. May. Some of the planned works on this list he actually did write later. After his release he failed starting a good existence and continued with thefts and frauds. Compared to the effort expended, the loot was meager. He got caught, but during judicial investigation, when he was transported to the crime scenes, he freed himself. May fled beyond Saxon boundaries to Bohemia
, where he was detained for vagabondage. He was in gaol again in Waldheim
from 1870 to 1874. There he met the catholic prison’s catechist Johannes Kochta, whose influence helped May to find to himself.
and economic freedom led to many start-ups of presses (especially in the field of light fiction). Between his two long imprisonments he had already contacted the publisher Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer in Dresden
. Now Münchmeyer engaged May as editor in his press. For the first time his livelihood was secure. He stewarded several entertainment papers (e. g. Schacht und Hütte) and wrote and edited numerous articles, some published under his own name, some under a pseudonym or anonymously (e. g. Geographische Predigten, 1875/76). May quit in 1876, because his employer tried to bind him to his company by marriage with Münchmeyer’s sister-in-law and the firm had a bad reputation. After a second engagement as editor in the press of Bruno Radelli, Dresden, in 1878 he became freelance writer
and moved to Dresden together with his girlfriend Emma Pollmer, whom he married in 1880. But his publications did not result in a regular income yet; there were rent and other arrears.
In 1879 Deutscher Hausschatz, a catholic weekly journal from the press of Friedrich Pustet
in Regensburg
, published the tale Three carde monte. After some more stories, they made the offer May should present them all of his tales first: In 1880 he started the Orient Cycle, which ran with interruptions until 1888. But at the same time he also wrote for other journals, used pseudonyms and different titles to get multiple payment for his texts. Until his death more than one hundred tales were published in instalments in diverse journals.
Another important journal was Der Gute Kamerad of Wilhelm Spemann, Stuttgart
, later on Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, which was a magazine for boys in secondary school. There his first tale was published in 1887 (Der Sohn des Bärenjägers) and it printed one of his most famous stories: Der Schatz im Silbersee (1890/91). In 1882 there was new contact with H. G. Münchmeyer and May started the first of five very large colportage novels
for his former employer. One of them, Das Waldröschen (1882–1884) had a total print run of several hundred thousand copies until 1907. But May made just a verbal agreement with Münchmeyer and later on this would become a problem.
In October 1888 May moved to Kötzschenbroda (a part of Radebeul
) and 1891 into Villa Agnes in Oberlößnitz (another part of Radebeul). The key breakthrough came in 1891 through contact with Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, who offered to print the Deutsche Hausschatz-stories as books. With the start of the new book series Carl May’s Gesammelte Reiseromane in 1892 (since 1896 Karl May's Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen) for the first time May experienced financial security and glory. But after a short time he had problems differentiating reality and fiction and went so far as to say that he himself had experienced the adventures of Old Shatterhand
and Kara Ben Nemsi
, respectively, which he had written about. This was the so called "Old Shatterhand Legend". A gunsmith
in Kötzschenbroda manufactured the legendary guns of the heroes in his novels for him, first the "Bärentöter" (Bear Killer) and the „Silberbüchse“ (The Silver Gun), later on the "Henrystutzen" (Henry Rifle
). Many readers accepted the equating of author and protagonist
and sent numerous letters to him that assumed it to be true. In the following years he conducted talking tours in Germany and Austria, allowed autographed cards to be printed and photos in costume to be taken. In December 1895 he moved into the Villa "Shatterhand" in Alt-Radebeul, which he bought from the Ziller Brothers.
to Sumatra
. In 1900 he met his wife and his friends, the couple Klara and Richard Plöhn. Together they continued the journey and returned to Radebeul in July 1900. For a year and a half May wrote a travel diary, which is extant in fragments and transcription parts. According to his second wife Klara (widowed Plöhn, see below) May twice had a nervous breakdown during the journey, each lasting over a week. Hans Wollschläger
and Ekkehard Bartsch believe that this was due to an irruption of the reality into May’s dream world. He overcame the crisis without medical benefit.
While May was on his Orient journey, attacks in the press set in, especially pursued by Hermann Cardauns and Rudolf Lebius. They criticised – with different motivations – May’s self-promotion and the associated "Old Shatterhand Legend". Simultaneously they reproached his religious sham (he wrote as protestant for the catholic Deutscher Hausschatz and several Marian calendars), immorality and later on his criminal history. These polemic
s and several trials about unauthorized book publications lasted until his death. His broken marriage was dissolved in 1903 through a suit brought on by May. According to May, Emma, who was a friend of his adversary, Pauline Münchmeyer (widow of H. G. Münchmeyer), embezzled documents, which could have verified the verbal agreement with Münchmeyer. In the same year he married the widow, Klara Plöhn.
Since his initial employment as editor, May illegally added a doctoral degree to his name. 1902 he got an Doctor honoris causa
from the Universitas Germana-Americana in Chicago
for his work Im Reiche des Silbernen Löwen. Christian Heermann assumes this happened at the behest of May or Klara Plöhn to give the false doctoral degree a legal basis. This university was a known diploma mill
, where degrees could be bought for money.
In 1908 Karl and Klara May travelled for six weeks to North America
. They visited among other cities, Albany
, Buffalo
, the Niagara Falls
and some friends in Lawrence
. But he did not reach the Wild West
. May used the journey as inspiration for his book Winnetou IV.
Since his Orient journey May wrote in another way. He called his former works "preparation" and started then writing complex, allegoric
texts. He was convinced that he could solve or at least, discuss the "question of mankind". He turned deliberately to pacifism
and wrote several books about the raising of humans from "evil" to "good". His friendship with the artist Sascha Schneider
lead to new symbolistic
covers for the Fehsenfeld edition. An exultant approval May experienced on 22 March 1912; he was invited by the Academic Society for Literature and Music in Vienna
to hold the talk Empor ins Reich der Edelmenschen ("Upward to the realm of noble men"). Thereby he met his friend, the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Bertha von Suttner
. Karl May died one week later on 30 March 1912. According to the register of deaths, the cause was "cardiac arrest
, acute bronchitis, asthma
". Today an (unrecognised) lung cancer
is not excluded. May was buried on the graveyard at Radebeul-East. The tomb was inspired by the Temple of Athena Nike Klara had seen during their travels to the Orient.
s, including Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura, D. Jam, Emma Pollmer (name of his first wife), Ernst von Linden, Hobble-Frank (figure of his work), Karl Hohenthal, M. Gisela, P. van der Löwen, Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont and Richard Plöhn (name of his friend). Today most pseudonymously or anonymously published works are identified.
For the novels set in America, May created the characters of Winnetou
, the wise chief
of the Apache Tribe, and Old Shatterhand
, the author's alter ego
and Winnetou's white blood brother
. Another successful series of novels is set in the Ottoman Empire
. Here the narrator-protagonist calls himself Kara Ben Nemsi
, i.e. Karl, son of Germans, and travels with his local guide and servant Hadschi Halef Omar
through the Sahara
desert and the Near East
, experiencing many exciting adventures.
There is a development from an anonymous first-person narrator
, who is just observer and reporter (e. g. Der Gitano, 1875), over addition of heroic skills and equipment (e. g. Old Firehand, 1875, later within Winnetou II) to the full formed first-person-narrator-heroes Old Shatterhand
(Deadly dust, 1880, later within Winnetou III) and Kara Ben Nemsi
(”Giölgeda padiśhanün”, 1881, later within Durch Wüste und Harem). Some first-person-narrator-heroes are called “Charley” (English for Karl) by friends and fellows. For a long time equipment (e. g. Henry rifle and Bear Killer) and skills (e. g. dash struck) were the same for all first-person-narrator-heroes. Then in Die Felsenburg / Krüger Bei (1893/94, later Satan und Ischariot I/II) May let occur the first-person narrator in the American Old West, in the Orient and in Germany. Therefore he identified Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi and Charley with Dr. Karl May in Dresden.
With some exceptions later on (Und Friede auf Erden!, 1904, and Winnetou IV, 1910), May had not visited the places he described. He compensated successfully for his lack of direct experience with these places by a combination of creativity, imagination, and factual sources including maps, travel accounts and guide books, as well as anthropological and linguistic studies. Also the work of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper
, Gabriel Ferry
, Friedrich Gerstäcker
, Balduin Möllhausen
and Mayne Reid served as models.
Non-dogma
tic Christian
feelings and values play an important role, and May's heroes are often described as being of German ancestry. In addition, following the Romantic
ideal of the "noble savage
" and inspired by the writings of writers like James Fenimore Cooper
or George Catlin
, his Native Americans
are usually portrayed as innocent victims of white law-breakers, and many are presented as heroic characters. He also wrote about the fate of other suppressed peoples. Karl May and his works are deeply rooted in the belief that all mankind should live together peacefully; all of his main characters try to avoid killing anyone, except when necessary to save other lives.
May deliberately made himself stand out of ethnological
prejudices and also wrote against the public opinion (e. g. Winnetou, Durchs wilde Kurdistan, Und Friede auf Erden!). Nevertheless in his work are some phrasings, which today are seen as “racialistic
”. These phrasings underlay the paradigm
s of his time. For example there are broad-brush pejorative statements about Armenians
, black people
, Chinese people
, Irish people
, jews
and mestizo
s. Therefore May was not uninfluenced by the nationalism
and racism, which were characteristics of Wilhelmine Germany
at that time. But in his novels there are also positive depicted Chinese people and mestizos, who contradict the common cliché
s. In a letter to a young jew, who planned becoming a Christian after he had read May’s books, he advised him first to understand his own religion, which is holy and exalted, until he is experienced enough to choose.
In his mature work (since 1900) May turned away from the adventurous style and wrote symbol
ic novels with religious and pacifistic content. The break is best shown in Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen. Herein the first two parts are adventurous and the last two parts belong to the mature work. In the context of this literarily developmental stage the friendship with art nouveau
painter and sculptor
Sascha Schneider
is important, who painted symbolic covers for May’s books. Karl May himself repeatedly stressed the importance of his mature work, though it was never as popular with the general public as his earlier adventure stories.
For a long time, literary critics tended to regard May's literature as trivial, but recent research has reversed this assessment, at least partially.
Im fernen Westen and Der Waldläufer are the first book editions of Karl May texts known.
Beside these texts there are many shorter stories, which can be divided into categories. There are village stories from the Erzgebirge (e. g. Die Rose von Ernstthal, 1874), novella
s (e. g. Wanda, 1875), humoresques (e. g. Die Fastnachtsnarren, 1875) and historical stories such as the series about „the Old Dessauer“ Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau
(e. g. Ein Stücklein vom alten Dessauer, 1875), as well as the first travel stories. Especially in his early work May used home settings, but there are also exotic scenes. His first non-European tale Inn-nu-woh, der Indianerhäuptling (1875) contains a rough draft of Winnetou
. Later some of these tales were published in anthologies, e. g. in Der Karawanenwürger und andere Erzählungen (1894), Humoresken und Erzählungen (1902) and Erzgebirgische Dorfgeschichten (1903).
Also to the early work belong articles such as natural philosophic tractates or popular scientific works about history and technology (e. g. Schätze und Schatzgräber, 1875), published answers to letters send to him as editor as well as poems (e. g. Meine einstige Grabinschrift, 1872).
novels May wrote mostly pseudonymously or anonymously for the press of H. G. Münchmeyer from 1882 to 1888. When May's authorship of these works emerged, he was publicly confronted, because contemporaneously the novels were seen as indecent, especially as they were written parallel to the commendable works in Deutscher Hausschatz.
From 1900 to 1906 Münchmeyer’s successor Adalbert Fischer published the first book editions. These were revised by third hand and published under May’s real name instead of using the pseudonym. This edition was not authorised by May and he tried to stop the publication.
-Trilogy
(7–9).
Generally there is no reading order, because May himself produced unintentionally chronological inconsistencies. Most of them arose, when he revised earlier texts for the book edition (e. g. within the Winnetou-Trilogy).
There are some shorter travel stories, which were not published within this series (e. g. Eine Befreiung within Die Rose von Kaïrwan, 1894). On this edition (so called “green volumes”) bases the series Karl May’s Illustrierte Reiseerzählungen (illustrated “blue volumes”, since 1907). This edition was revised by May himself and is the definitive edition. It contains just the first thirty volumes which have partly another numbering.
After foundation of the Karl May Press in 1913 in the new series "Karl May's Gesammelte Werke" many volumes were revised (partly radically) and many got new titles. Texts from others than Fehsenfeld Press were added to the new series.
Between 1890 and 1899 Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft published them as illustrated book edition.
Parallel to this major work May also published shorter stories and some puzzles anonymously or pseudonymously from 1887 to 1891. These were written mostly to given illustrations. One of the pseudonyms was “Hobble-Frank”, which was a popular character in his stories for the youth with Wild West setting. Also his answers to letters by the readers were published within Der Gute Kamerad.
Some shorter stories also belong to the mature work (e. g. Schamah, 1907), also some essay
s and articles (e. g. Briefe über Kunst, 1906/07) as well as texts he wrote in the context of lawsuit
s against him, to defend himself before the public (e. g ”Karl May als Erzieher” und “Die Wahrheit über Karl May” oder Die Gegner Karl Mays in ihrem eigenen Lichte, 1902).
During his last years May hold talks about his philosophic
ideas.
After May’s death there were publishings of his residue: Fragments of stories and dramas, lyrics, musical compositions, his self made library catalogue and mostly letters.
The first translation
of May’s work was the first half of the Orient Cycle into French 1881 (just ten years after the French-German War), which was published in Le Monde
. Since that time May’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages including Latin
, Esperanto
and Volapük
. In the 1960s the UNESCO
stated May being the most translated German writer. Outside the German-speaking area he is most popular in the Czech language
area, Hungary
and the Netherlands
. In France
, Great Britain
and the USA he is nearly unknown. In 2001 Nemsi Books Publishing Company located in Pierpont, South Dakota, opened its doors to become one of the first English publishing houses dedicated to the unabridged translations of Karl May's original work.
List of languages: Afrikaans
, Brazilian
, Bulgarian
, Chinese
, Czech
, Danish
, Dutch
, English (British)
, English (American)
, Esperanto
, Finnish
, French
, Greek
, Hungarian
, Icelandic
, Italian
, Japanese
, Latin
, Latvian
, Lithuanian
, Malay
, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Romanian
, Russian
, Serbo-Croatian
, Slovakian, Slovene, Spanish
, Swedish
, Ukrainian
, Vietnamese
, Volapük
, Yiddish
There are also braille editions
and editions read for visually impaired or blind
people.
The image of Native Americans in Germany is greatly influenced by May. The name Winnetou even has an entry in the main German dictionary Duden
. The wider influence on the populace also surprised post-WWII occupation troops from the US, who realised that thanks to Karl May, "Cowboys and Indians" were familiar concepts to local children (though fantastic and removed from reality).
Many well-known German-speaking people used May’s heroes as models in their childhood. Physicist Albert Einstein
was a great fan of Karl May's books and is quoted as having said "My whole adolescence stood under his sign. Indeed, even today, he has been dear to me in many a desperate hour…" Many others have given positive statements about their Karl May reading.
Adolf Hitler
was an admirer, who noted that the novels "overwhelmed" him as a boy, going as far as to ensure "a noticeable decline" in his school grades. According to an anonymous friend, Hitler attended the lecture given by May in Vienna in March 1912 and was enthusiastic about the event. Ironically, the lecture was an appeal for peace, also heard by Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Bertha von Suttner
. Claus Roxin
doubts the anonymous description, because Hitler had told much about May, but not that he had seen him. Hitler defended May against critics in the men's hostel where he lived in Vienna, as the evidence of May's earlier time in jail had come to light; although it was true, Hitler confessed, that May had never visited the sites of his American adventure stories, this made him a greater writer in Hitler's view since it showed the author's powers of imagination. May died suddenly only ten days after the lecture, leaving the young Hitler deeply upset.
Hitler later recommended the books to his generals and had special editions distributed to soldiers at the front, praising Winnetou as an example of "tactical finesse and circumspection", though some note that the latter claims of using the books as military guidance are not substantiated. However, as told by Albert Speer
, "when faced by seemingly hopeless situations, he [Hitler] would still reach for these stories," because "they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible for elderly people." This influence on the German 'Fuehrer' was later castigated by Klaus Mann
, a German writer who accused May of having been a form of 'mentor' for Hitler.
In his admiration Hitler ignored May's Christian and humanitarian approach and views completely, not mentioning his – in some novels – relatively sympathetic description of Jews and persons of non-white race.
The real or imagined fate of Native Americans was abused during the world wars for anti-American propaganda. The National Socialists in particular tried to use May’s popularity and his work for their purposes. May was criticised as having offered those materials for exploitation by the Nazis. Several novels of Karl May were re-edited in an antisemitic style during the years of Nazism and led to serious misunderstandings about May's original intentions. Due to these undesirable uses of his books, the authorities of the new Eastern Germany were less approving of May’s work, and officially considered him a "chauvinist" - though this did not effect his popularity, and during the 1980s there was a Karl May renaissance.
was intrigued by the May’s great Apache chief and named his daughter Maria Winnetou (* 1926).
Max von der Grün
reported that he read Karl May as a young boy. When asked whether reading May's books had given him anything, he answered: "No. It took something away from me. The fear of bulky books that is."
Also Heinz Werner Höber
, twofold Glauser
prize winner, was a self-confessed follower of Karl May: "When I was about 12 years old I wrote my first novel on Native Americans which was of course from the beginning to the end completely stolen from Karl May." He had pleaded with friends to get him to Radebeul "because Radebeul meant Karl May". There he was deeply impressed by the museum and stated: "My great country fellowman from Hohenstein-Ernstthal and his immortal heros have never left me ever since."
clangs” for the drama Babel und Bibel. The Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck
made an opera
from Der Schatz im Silbersee in the age of eleven. Others wrote music inspired by May’s works (e. g. around Winnetou’s death).
The first stage
adaptation was Winnetou by Hermann Dimmler in 1919. Revisions by him and Ludwig Körner were played in the following years. After the Second World War first adaptations were conducted in Austria
. In East Germany they started not before 1984. Different novel revisions are played on outdoor stages since the 1940s. The most famous “Karl May Festivals” are held every summer in Bad Segeberg
(since 1952) and in Lennestadt-Elspe (since 1958). At both places movie actor Pierre Brice
played Winnetou. Another festival is on the rock stage in Rathen
, in the Saxon Switzerland
near Radebeul (1940, then since 1984). Many other stages in Austria and Germany show or showed plays after Karl May. In 2006 these were 14 stages. May’s own drama Babel und Bibel has not been played on a bigger stage yet.
Karl May’s friends Marie Luise Droop and her husband Adolf Droop among others founded in cooperation with the Karl May Press the production company
“Ustad-Film” (the name refers to May himself in Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III/IV) in 1920. They produced three silent movies
(Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses
, Die Todeskarawane
and Die Teufelsanbeter
) after the Orientcycle in 1920, which are lost. Due to the low success “Ustad-Film” went bankrupt
in the following year. The first sound movie Durch die Wüste
was shown in 1936. “Die Sklavenkarawane” (1958) and its sequel “Der Löwe von Babylon” (1959) were the first colour movies. Famous is the Karl May movie wave from 1962–1968, which was one of the most successful German movie series. While most of the 17 movies were Wild West movies (beginning with “Der Schatz im Silbersee”), three were based on the Orientcycle and two on Das Waldröschen. Most of these movies were made separately by the two competitors Horst Wendlandt
and Artur Brauner
. Following actors played main characters in several movies of the series: Lex Barker
(Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi, Karl Sternau), Pierre Brice
(Winnetou), Stewart Granger
(Old Surehand), Milan Srdoč (Old Wabble) and Ralf Wolter
(Sam Hawkens, Hadschi Halef Omar, André Hasenpfeffer). The film score
by Martin Böttcher
has also become famous and together with the landscape of Yugoslavia
, where most movies were shot, it participate to the great success of the series. After the series more movies for cinema (“Die Spur führt zum Silbersee”, 1990) or TV (e. g. “Das Buschgespenst”, 1986) and TV-series (e. g. “Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi
”, 1973) were produced. Most Karl May movies are far from the original, some even contain nothing more than May’s main figures.
No other German writer has more audio dramas than Karl May, which have a number of about 300. Günther Bibo wrote the first one (Der Schatz im Silbersee) in 1929. A greater wave was during the 1960s. There are also Czech and Danish audio dramas.
After the ending of the term of copyright and with the success of the Karl May movie series of the 1960s the first German comic wave occurred. A second comic wave came during the 1970s. The first and qualitative best German comic was Winnetou (# 1-8) / Karl May (# 9-52) (1963–1965). It was drawn by Helmut Nickel and Harry Ehrt and published by Walter Lehning Verlag. The most comprehensive comic was published by the press Standaard Uitgeverij
. This Flemish
comic Karl May was drawn by the studio of Willy Vandersteen
in 87 issues from 1862–1987. Also in other countries comics were produced: e. g. Czechoslovakia
(often reduced to the wild west plot), Denmark
, France
, Mexico
, Spain
and Sweden
.
In 1988 Der Schatz im Silbersee was read by Gert Westphal and published as audiobook. “Wann sehe ich dich wieder, du lieber, lieber Winnetou?“ (1995) is a compendium of Karl May texts read by Hermann Wiedenroth. Since 1998 different presses (e. g. Karl May Press) have released an increasing number of about 50 audiobooks. Another famous reader is movie actor Peter Sodann
.
Karl May and his life were basis for screen adaptations: Freispruch für Old Shatterhand (1965, dir. Hans Heinrich) and Karl May (1974, dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
) as well as a 6-episode TV series Karl May (1992, dir. Klaus Überall). There are also novels with or about Karl May, e. g. “Swallow, mein wackerer Mustang” (1980) by Erich Loest
, “Vom Wunsch, Indianer zu werden. Wie Franz Kafka
Karl May traf und trotzdem nicht in Amerika landete“ (1994) by Peter Henisch, “Old Shatterhand in Moabit” (1994) by Walter Püschel and “Karl May und der Wettermacher” (2001) by Jürgen Heinzerling. A stage adaptation is “Die Taschenuhr des Anderen“ by Willi Olbrich.
or parodied
. While some just wrote similar wild west stories to participate on his literarily success (e. g. Franz Treller), others even used May’s name to publish their works. Also today novels with May figures are published. In “Hadschi Halef Omar” (2010) Jörg Kastner describes the first contact of the titular character with Kara Ben Nemsi. Franz Kandolf wrote “In Mekka” (1923) a sequel to Am Jenseits, which is official part of Karl May’s Gesammelte Werke as vol. 50. An alternative to Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III/IV by Heinz Grill (“Die Schatten des Schah-in-Schah”, 2006) has been written in the adventurous style of the first parts. As sequel to Winnetou IV May had planned Winnetous Testament. A series of eight volumes with this title has been written by Jutta Laroche and Reinhard Marheinecke. Other famous writers of sequels are Friederike Chudoba, Otto Emersleben, Thomas Jeier
, Edmund Theil and Iris Wörner (Her pseudonym Nscho-tschi refers to Winnetou’s sister).
The 2001 film Der Schuh des Manitu
by Michael Herbig is a parody on the Karl May Films of the 1960s and spoof extensively the characters and motives of May's Winnetou trilogy.
s, journalist
s and editor
s, who through no fault of their own, had got into financial difficulties. One year after May’s death on 5 March 1913, Klara May established the "Karl May Foundation" ("Karl-May-Stiftung"). Contributions are made since 1917. With contracts of inheritance and wills of Klara May the property of both went to the Karl May Foundation. Following her instructions, the foundation established a Karl May Museum to maintain the Villa “Shatterhand“, the estates, the collections (the museum was founded during her lifetime) and to maintain May's tomb.
In 1960, the Karl May Foundation leaved the Karl May Press, which belonged to her by two-thirds. Thereby the press got parts of May’s properties.
Euchar Albrecht Schmid established the “Foundation Press Fehsenfeld & Co.” (“Stiftungs-Verlag Fehsenfeld & Co.“) in Radebeul. In 1915 the name changed into “Karl May Press“ (”Karl-May-Verlag“ = KMV). They ended the civil disputes (e. g. about the colportage novels) and got the rights of works from others presses (e. g the colportage novels and the stories for the youth). Third hand revisions of these texts were added to the series Karl May’s Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen, which was renamed to Karl May’s Gesammelte Werke (und Briefe). The existing 33 volumes of the original series also were (partly radically) revised. Until 1945 there were 65 volumes. The press nearly only publishes works of Karl May and secondary literature. Beside the Gesammelte Werke (the classical “green volumes”), which have 91 volumes today, the press has a huge reprint programme.
Other targets of the young press were rehabilitation of May against literary criticism and support of the Karl May Foundation. Since the contractual quitting of Fehsenfeld in 1921 and the separation from the Karl May Foundation (as Klara May’s heir) in 1960 the press lies in hands of the Schmid family. Due to the attitudes of the authorities of the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany towards May (his works should not be printed) the press moved to Bamberg
(West Germany) in 1959. After the German reunification
the press has a second place of residence in Radebeul since 1996. When in 1963 the term of copyright ended the press lost its monopoly. The press started a commercialisation of May. The name “Karl May” is registered trade mark of the “Karl May Verwaltungs- und Vertriebs-GmbH”, which belongs to the Karl May Press.
Patty Frank (Ernst Tobis). Karl May’s collection about Native Americans, which was added by Klara May, and the whole collection of Patty Frank were joined, therefore Frank became the first curator
and got life estate in “Villa Bear Fat”. During the time of the GDR the museum was renamed “Native Americans Museum of the Karl May Foundation” in 1956 and Karl May related exhibits were removed in 1962.
After rethinking of the GDR authorities the museum got its former name back and the street even was renamed “Karl May Street” in 1984. While “Villa Bear Fat” further on contains the exhibition about Native Americans, where the fireplace room today is used for events, Villa “Shatterhand” shows an exhibition about Karl May since 1985. Beside the library, which can be used for research, the work room and parlour
(so called “Sascha Schneider Room”) are originally arranged. Among others the replicas of the “famous guns” and a bust of Winnetou are shown. Opposite to Villa “Shatterhand” May’s fruit garden has become the “Karl May Grove” (“Karl-May-Hain”).
, where May was born. During the May renaissance in the GDR it has become a memorial and museum since 12 March 1985. Beside the permanent exhibition about May’s life rebuild rooms like a weaver chamber and non-German book editions are shown. The garden has been arranged according to May’s description in his biography. Opposite the house lays the “International Karl May Heritage Center” (“Karl-May-Begegnungsstätte”), which is used for events and special exhibitions. In Hohenstein-Ernstthal
, which is called “Karl May Home Town” since 1992, every May related place has a commemorative plaque
. These places are connected by a “Karl May Path” (“Karl-May-Wanderweg”). Outside the city lays the “Karl May Cave
” (“Karl-May-Höhle”), where May found shelter during his criminal time.
, Australia
and Indonesia
. While the societies are responsible for the release of most Karl May-related periodicals (e. g Der Beobachter an der Elbe, Karl-May-Haus Information, Wiener Karl-May-Brief, Karl May in Leipzig), the magazine
Karl May & Co. is published independently.
The “Karl May Society” (“Karl May Gesellschaft e.V.” = KMG) is the largest society with approximately 1800 members. The KMG was founded on 22 March 1969. One of its main objectives is to conduct research on Karl May’s life and work and to promote his recognition in the official history of literature and the general public. Among the various publications of the society are the Jahrbuch, the Mitteilungen, the Sonderhefte der Karl-May-Gesellschaft, and the KMG-Nachrichten as well as a huge reprint programmme. Since 2008 and in cooperation with the Karl May Foundation and the Karl May Press, the KMG publishes the critical edition of “Karl Mays Werke”. This project had been initiated by Hans Wollschläger
and Hermann Wiedenroth in 1987. After initial disruptions and changes also regarding the printing the project is now conceptualized to more than 99 volumes.
.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, noted mainly for adventure novels set in the American Old West
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
, (best known for the characters of Winnetou
Winnetou
Winnetou is a fictional Native American hero of several novels written by Karl May in German, including the sequels Winnetou I through Winnetou IV....
and Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand is a fictional character in western novels by German writer Karl May . He is the German friend and blood brother of Winnetou, the fictional chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache...
) and similar books set in the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
and Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
(with Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi is a fictional character in the works of Karl May, best-selling 19th century German writer...
and Hadschi Halef Omar
Hadschi Halef Omar
Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gossarah, literally hajji Halef Omar, son of hajji father-of-Abbas, son of hajji David al Gossarah, is one of Karl May's literary characters...
). In addition, he wrote stories set in his native Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and in South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. May also has written poetry and a play, and composed music; he also was proficient with several musical instruments. Many of his works were filmed
Karl May movies
Karl May films are films based on stories and characters by German author Karl May . The characters Old Shatterhand, Winnetou, and Kara Ben Nemsi are very famous in Central Europe....
, adapted for the stage, processed to audio dramas or transcribed into comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
. A highly imaginative and fanciful writer, May never visited the exotic places featured in his stories until late in life, when the clash between fiction and reality led to a complete change in his work.
Asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
348 May
348 May
348 May is a large Main belt asteroid.It was discovered by Auguste Charlois on November 28, 1892 in Nice....
is named in his honor.
Youth
Karl May was born into a family of poor weavers in ErnstthalHohenstein-Ernstthal
Hohenstein-Ernstthal is a town in the Zwickau rural district, Free State of Saxony, Germany. The towns of Hohenstein and Ernstthal were united in 1898, and the town is either known by its hyphenated form, or simply called Hohenstein....
, Schönburgische Rezessherrschaften (later part of the Kingdom of Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...
). He was the fifth child out of fourteen, nine of whom died within several months of birth. According to his autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, he suffered from visual impairment shortly after birth and regained his eyesight after treatment at the age of five. Possibly a lack of vitamin A led to night blindness
Nyctalopia
Nyctalopia is a condition making it difficult or impossible to see in relatively low light. It is a symptom of several eye diseases. Night blindness may exist from birth, or be caused by injury or malnutrition...
, which got worse.
During his school time he got private music and composition lessons. According to his own story he earned money for this at the age of twelve at a skittle alley
Nine-pin bowling
Nine-pin bowling is a bowling game played primarily in Europe. European championships are held each year. Over 90,000 members are on teams in Germany, often playing in officially registered Bundeskegelbahnen to be found in almost every sizable town...
, where he was able to hear the coarse words of the players.
Delinquency
1856 he started his teacher training in WaldenburgWaldenburg, Saxony
Waldenburg is a town in the district Zwickau in Saxony, Germany.-Subdivisions:The town of Waldenburg consists of the following subdivisions:*Waldenburg*Dürrenuhlsdorf*Franken*Niederwinkel*Oberwinkel*Schlagwitz*Schwaben-Attractions:...
, but was excluded in 1859, because he embezzled six candles. After a petition he was allowed to continue his education in Plauen
Plauen
Plauen is a town in the Free State of Saxony, east-central Germany.It is the capital of the Vogtlandkreis. The town is situated near the border of Bavaria and the Czech Republic.Plauen's slogan is Plauen - echt Spitze.-History:...
. His career as a teacher ended abruptly after only a few weeks when he was accused by his roommate of stealing a pocket watch. Therefore he had to be in gaol in Chemnitz
Chemnitz
Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...
for six weeks and his license to teach was revoked permanently.
During the following years he tried to earn a living by giving private education, writing tales, composing and declaiming. But these did not secure his livelihood. As consequence he started thefts and frauds. He was sentenced to four years in a workhouse
Workhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
. From 1865 to 1869 he was in gaol in the workhouse Osterstein Castle
Osterstein Castle
Osterstein Castle is the former castle of the town of Zwickau, Germany, in Saxony . Now it houses the nursing home.- History :...
(Zwickau
Zwickau
Zwickau in Germany, former seat of the government of the south-western region of the Free State of Saxony, belongs to an industrial and economical core region. Nowadays it is the capital city of the district of Zwickau...
). Because of good behaviour he became administrator of the prison’s library and had the chance to read much, including travel literature. He planned to become an author and made a list of titles of works he planned to write, named Repertorium C. May. Some of the planned works on this list he actually did write later. After his release he failed starting a good existence and continued with thefts and frauds. Compared to the effort expended, the loot was meager. He got caught, but during judicial investigation, when he was transported to the crime scenes, he freed himself. May fled beyond Saxon boundaries to Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, where he was detained for vagabondage. He was in gaol again in Waldheim
Waldheim, Saxony
Waldheim is a town in the district of Mittelsachsen, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the Zschopau River, 9 km southwest of Döbeln, and 28 km north of Chemnitz....
from 1870 to 1874. There he met the catholic prison’s catechist Johannes Kochta, whose influence helped May to find to himself.
Writing
After May’s release in May 1874 he went back to his parents in Ernstthal and started writing. The first known publication of a Karl May tale (Die Rose von Ernstthal) was in November 1874. It was a time when the German press was on the move. Industrialisation, increasing literacyLiteracy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
and economic freedom led to many start-ups of presses (especially in the field of light fiction). Between his two long imprisonments he had already contacted the publisher Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. Now Münchmeyer engaged May as editor in his press. For the first time his livelihood was secure. He stewarded several entertainment papers (e. g. Schacht und Hütte) and wrote and edited numerous articles, some published under his own name, some under a pseudonym or anonymously (e. g. Geographische Predigten, 1875/76). May quit in 1876, because his employer tried to bind him to his company by marriage with Münchmeyer’s sister-in-law and the firm had a bad reputation. After a second engagement as editor in the press of Bruno Radelli, Dresden, in 1878 he became freelance writer
Freelancer
A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are often represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and...
and moved to Dresden together with his girlfriend Emma Pollmer, whom he married in 1880. But his publications did not result in a regular income yet; there were rent and other arrears.
In 1879 Deutscher Hausschatz, a catholic weekly journal from the press of Friedrich Pustet
Pustet
-History:The original home of the Pustets was the Republic of Venice, where the name Bustetto is common. Probably in the seventeenth century, the founder of the Ratisbon line emigrated to South Germany, where one of his descendants, Anton Pustet, lived as a poor bookbinder in the Lower Bavarian...
in Regensburg
Regensburg
Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...
, published the tale Three carde monte. After some more stories, they made the offer May should present them all of his tales first: In 1880 he started the Orient Cycle, which ran with interruptions until 1888. But at the same time he also wrote for other journals, used pseudonyms and different titles to get multiple payment for his texts. Until his death more than one hundred tales were published in instalments in diverse journals.
Another important journal was Der Gute Kamerad of Wilhelm Spemann, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, later on Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, which was a magazine for boys in secondary school. There his first tale was published in 1887 (Der Sohn des Bärenjägers) and it printed one of his most famous stories: Der Schatz im Silbersee (1890/91). In 1882 there was new contact with H. G. Münchmeyer and May started the first of five very large colportage novels
Colportage
Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, religious tracts, etc., by carriers called "colporteurs".The term is an alteration of French comporter, "to peddle" as a portmanteau or pun with the word col , with the resulting meaning "to carry on one's neck". Porter, is from Latin portare,...
for his former employer. One of them, Das Waldröschen (1882–1884) had a total print run of several hundred thousand copies until 1907. But May made just a verbal agreement with Münchmeyer and later on this would become a problem.
In October 1888 May moved to Kötzschenbroda (a part of Radebeul
Radebeul
Radebeul is a town in the Elbe valley in the district of Meißen in Saxony, Germany, a suburb of Dresden. It is well-known for its viticulture, a museum dedicated to writer Karl May and a narrow gauge railway connecting Radebeul with the castle of Moritzburg and the town of Radeburg...
) and 1891 into Villa Agnes in Oberlößnitz (another part of Radebeul). The key breakthrough came in 1891 through contact with Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, who offered to print the Deutsche Hausschatz-stories as books. With the start of the new book series Carl May’s Gesammelte Reiseromane in 1892 (since 1896 Karl May's Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen) for the first time May experienced financial security and glory. But after a short time he had problems differentiating reality and fiction and went so far as to say that he himself had experienced the adventures of Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand is a fictional character in western novels by German writer Karl May . He is the German friend and blood brother of Winnetou, the fictional chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache...
and Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi is a fictional character in the works of Karl May, best-selling 19th century German writer...
, respectively, which he had written about. This was the so called "Old Shatterhand Legend". A gunsmith
Gunsmith
A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds firearms. This occupation is different from an armorer. The armorer primarily maintains weapons and limited repairs involving parts replacement and possibly work involving accurization...
in Kötzschenbroda manufactured the legendary guns of the heroes in his novels for him, first the "Bärentöter" (Bear Killer) and the „Silberbüchse“ (The Silver Gun), later on the "Henrystutzen" (Henry Rifle
Henry rifle
The Henry repeating rifle was a lever-action, breech-loading, tubular magazine rifle.-History:The original Henry rifle was a .44 caliber rimfire, lever-action, breech-loading rifle designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in the late 1850s. The Henry rifle was an improved version of the earlier Volcanic...
). Many readers accepted the equating of author and protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
and sent numerous letters to him that assumed it to be true. In the following years he conducted talking tours in Germany and Austria, allowed autographed cards to be printed and photos in costume to be taken. In December 1895 he moved into the Villa "Shatterhand" in Alt-Radebeul, which he bought from the Ziller Brothers.
Last Years
In 1899/1900 May travelled to the Orient. In the first part he was for nearly three-quarters of a year just accompanied by his servant Sejd Hassan and went from EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
to Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
. In 1900 he met his wife and his friends, the couple Klara and Richard Plöhn. Together they continued the journey and returned to Radebeul in July 1900. For a year and a half May wrote a travel diary, which is extant in fragments and transcription parts. According to his second wife Klara (widowed Plöhn, see below) May twice had a nervous breakdown during the journey, each lasting over a week. Hans Wollschläger
Hans Wollschläger
thumb|right|150px| Signature, 1988Hans Wollschläger was a German writer, translator, historian, and editor of German literature.-Biography:...
and Ekkehard Bartsch believe that this was due to an irruption of the reality into May’s dream world. He overcame the crisis without medical benefit.
While May was on his Orient journey, attacks in the press set in, especially pursued by Hermann Cardauns and Rudolf Lebius. They criticised – with different motivations – May’s self-promotion and the associated "Old Shatterhand Legend". Simultaneously they reproached his religious sham (he wrote as protestant for the catholic Deutscher Hausschatz and several Marian calendars), immorality and later on his criminal history. These polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
s and several trials about unauthorized book publications lasted until his death. His broken marriage was dissolved in 1903 through a suit brought on by May. According to May, Emma, who was a friend of his adversary, Pauline Münchmeyer (widow of H. G. Münchmeyer), embezzled documents, which could have verified the verbal agreement with Münchmeyer. In the same year he married the widow, Klara Plöhn.
Since his initial employment as editor, May illegally added a doctoral degree to his name. 1902 he got an Doctor honoris causa
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
from the Universitas Germana-Americana in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
for his work Im Reiche des Silbernen Löwen. Christian Heermann assumes this happened at the behest of May or Klara Plöhn to give the false doctoral degree a legal basis. This university was a known diploma mill
Diploma mill
A diploma mill is an organization that awards academic degrees and diplomas with substandard or no academic study and without recognition by official educational accrediting bodies. The purchaser can then claim to hold an academic degree, and the organization is motivated by making a profit...
, where degrees could be bought for money.
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. They visited among other cities, Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, the Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
and some friends in Lawrence
Lawrence, Massachusetts
Lawrence is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States on the Merrimack River. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a total population of 76,377. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and North Andover to the southeast. It and Salem are...
. But he did not reach the Wild West
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
. May used the journey as inspiration for his book Winnetou IV.
Since his Orient journey May wrote in another way. He called his former works "preparation" and started then writing complex, allegoric
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
texts. He was convinced that he could solve or at least, discuss the "question of mankind". He turned deliberately to pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and wrote several books about the raising of humans from "evil" to "good". His friendship with the artist Sascha Schneider
Sascha Schneider
Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider , was a German painter and sculptor.-Biography :...
lead to new symbolistic
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
covers for the Fehsenfeld edition. An exultant approval May experienced on 22 March 1912; he was invited by the Academic Society for Literature and Music in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
to hold the talk Empor ins Reich der Edelmenschen ("Upward to the realm of noble men"). Thereby he met his friend, the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
laureate Bertha von Suttner
Bertha von Suttner
Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner was an Austrian novelist, radical pacifist, and the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.-Biography:Suttner was born in Prague, Bohemia, the daughter of an impoverished Austrian Field Marshal,...
. Karl May died one week later on 30 March 1912. According to the register of deaths, the cause was "cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...
, acute bronchitis, asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
". Today an (unrecognised) lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
is not excluded. May was buried on the graveyard at Radebeul-East. The tomb was inspired by the Temple of Athena Nike Klara had seen during their travels to the Orient.
Introduction
May used many different pseudonymPseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s, including Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura, D. Jam, Emma Pollmer (name of his first wife), Ernst von Linden, Hobble-Frank (figure of his work), Karl Hohenthal, M. Gisela, P. van der Löwen, Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont and Richard Plöhn (name of his friend). Today most pseudonymously or anonymously published works are identified.
For the novels set in America, May created the characters of Winnetou
Winnetou
Winnetou is a fictional Native American hero of several novels written by Karl May in German, including the sequels Winnetou I through Winnetou IV....
, the wise chief
Tribal chief
A tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...
of the Apache Tribe, and Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand is a fictional character in western novels by German writer Karl May . He is the German friend and blood brother of Winnetou, the fictional chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache...
, the author's alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
and Winnetou's white blood brother
Blood brother
Blood brother can refer to one of two things: two males related by birth, or two or more men not related by birth who have sworn loyalty to each other. This is usually done in a ceremony, known as a blood oath, where the blood of each man is mingled together...
. Another successful series of novels is set in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. Here the narrator-protagonist calls himself Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi is a fictional character in the works of Karl May, best-selling 19th century German writer...
, i.e. Karl, son of Germans, and travels with his local guide and servant Hadschi Halef Omar
Hadschi Halef Omar
Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gossarah, literally hajji Halef Omar, son of hajji father-of-Abbas, son of hajji David al Gossarah, is one of Karl May's literary characters...
through the Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
desert and the Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
, experiencing many exciting adventures.
There is a development from an anonymous first-person narrator
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, who is just observer and reporter (e. g. Der Gitano, 1875), over addition of heroic skills and equipment (e. g. Old Firehand, 1875, later within Winnetou II) to the full formed first-person-narrator-heroes Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand is a fictional character in western novels by German writer Karl May . He is the German friend and blood brother of Winnetou, the fictional chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache...
(Deadly dust, 1880, later within Winnetou III) and Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi
Kara Ben Nemsi is a fictional character in the works of Karl May, best-selling 19th century German writer...
(”Giölgeda padiśhanün”, 1881, later within Durch Wüste und Harem). Some first-person-narrator-heroes are called “Charley” (English for Karl) by friends and fellows. For a long time equipment (e. g. Henry rifle and Bear Killer) and skills (e. g. dash struck) were the same for all first-person-narrator-heroes. Then in Die Felsenburg / Krüger Bei (1893/94, later Satan und Ischariot I/II) May let occur the first-person narrator in the American Old West, in the Orient and in Germany. Therefore he identified Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi and Charley with Dr. Karl May in Dresden.
With some exceptions later on (Und Friede auf Erden!, 1904, and Winnetou IV, 1910), May had not visited the places he described. He compensated successfully for his lack of direct experience with these places by a combination of creativity, imagination, and factual sources including maps, travel accounts and guide books, as well as anthropological and linguistic studies. Also the work of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, Gabriel Ferry
Gabriel Ferry
-Gabriel Ferry the Elder:The elder, Eugène Louis Gabriel Ferry de Bellemare , wrote adventure novels. He spent 10 years in Mexico. He died in the age of 41 on his way to California, when the ship Amazone sunk in the British Channel after a fire coursed by a lightning...
, Friedrich Gerstäcker
Friedrich Gerstäcker
Friedrich Gerstäcker was a German traveler and novelist.-Biography:He was the son of Friedrich Gerstäcker , a celebrated opera singer. After being apprenticed to a commercial house, he learnt farming in Saxony...
, Balduin Möllhausen
Balduin Möllhausen
Balduin Möllhausen was a German traveler and artist who visited the United States and wrote novels based on his experiences.-Biography:...
and Mayne Reid served as models.
Non-dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
tic Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
feelings and values play an important role, and May's heroes are often described as being of German ancestry. In addition, following the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
ideal of the "noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
" and inspired by the writings of writers like James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
or George Catlin
George Catlin
George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.-Early years:...
, his Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
are usually portrayed as innocent victims of white law-breakers, and many are presented as heroic characters. He also wrote about the fate of other suppressed peoples. Karl May and his works are deeply rooted in the belief that all mankind should live together peacefully; all of his main characters try to avoid killing anyone, except when necessary to save other lives.
May deliberately made himself stand out of ethnological
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
prejudices and also wrote against the public opinion (e. g. Winnetou, Durchs wilde Kurdistan, Und Friede auf Erden!). Nevertheless in his work are some phrasings, which today are seen as “racialistic
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
”. These phrasings underlay the paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
s of his time. For example there are broad-brush pejorative statements about Armenians
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
, black people
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
, Chinese people
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
, Irish people
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
, jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
s. Therefore May was not uninfluenced by the nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and racism, which were characteristics of Wilhelmine Germany
Wilhelmine Germany
Wilhelmine Germany can refer to:*Imperial Germany during the 1888-1918 reign of Wilhelm II, particularly after the resignation of Otto von Bismarck*Germany during the entire 1871-1918 Empire, ruled for most of its existence by Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II...
at that time. But in his novels there are also positive depicted Chinese people and mestizos, who contradict the common cliché
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
s. In a letter to a young jew, who planned becoming a Christian after he had read May’s books, he advised him first to understand his own religion, which is holy and exalted, until he is experienced enough to choose.
In his mature work (since 1900) May turned away from the adventurous style and wrote symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic novels with religious and pacifistic content. The break is best shown in Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen. Herein the first two parts are adventurous and the last two parts belong to the mature work. In the context of this literarily developmental stage the friendship with art nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
painter and sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
Sascha Schneider
Sascha Schneider
Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider , was a German painter and sculptor.-Biography :...
is important, who painted symbolic covers for May’s books. Karl May himself repeatedly stressed the importance of his mature work, though it was never as popular with the general public as his earlier adventure stories.
For a long time, literary critics tended to regard May's literature as trivial, but recent research has reversed this assessment, at least partially.
Early work
In his early work Karl May tried several genres until he show his proficiency with travel stories. During his time as editor he published many of this works within the periodicals, for which he was responsible. The time of the early work lasted until about 1880.- Das Buch der Liebe (1875/76, educational work)
- Geographische Predigten (1875/76, educational work)
- Der beiden Quitzows letzte Fahrten (1876/77, not finished by Karl May)
- Auf hoher See gefangen (1877/78, also entitled as Auf der See gefangen, parts later revised for Old Surehand II)
- Scepter und Hammer (1879/80)
- Im fernen Westen (1879, revision of Old Firehand (1875), later revised for Winnetou II)
- Der Waldläufer (1879, revision for the youth of "Le Coureur de Bois", a novel by Gabriel FerryGabriel Ferry-Gabriel Ferry the Elder:The elder, Eugène Louis Gabriel Ferry de Bellemare , wrote adventure novels. He spent 10 years in Mexico. He died in the age of 41 on his way to California, when the ship Amazone sunk in the British Channel after a fire coursed by a lightning...
) - Die Juweleninsel (1880–82)
Im fernen Westen and Der Waldläufer are the first book editions of Karl May texts known.
Beside these texts there are many shorter stories, which can be divided into categories. There are village stories from the Erzgebirge (e. g. Die Rose von Ernstthal, 1874), novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s (e. g. Wanda, 1875), humoresques (e. g. Die Fastnachtsnarren, 1875) and historical stories such as the series about „the Old Dessauer“ Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau
Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau
Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Dessau. He was also a Generalfeldmarschall in the Prussian army...
(e. g. Ein Stücklein vom alten Dessauer, 1875), as well as the first travel stories. Especially in his early work May used home settings, but there are also exotic scenes. His first non-European tale Inn-nu-woh, der Indianerhäuptling (1875) contains a rough draft of Winnetou
Winnetou
Winnetou is a fictional Native American hero of several novels written by Karl May in German, including the sequels Winnetou I through Winnetou IV....
. Later some of these tales were published in anthologies, e. g. in Der Karawanenwürger und andere Erzählungen (1894), Humoresken und Erzählungen (1902) and Erzgebirgische Dorfgeschichten (1903).
Also to the early work belong articles such as natural philosophic tractates or popular scientific works about history and technology (e. g. Schätze und Schatzgräber, 1875), published answers to letters send to him as editor as well as poems (e. g. Meine einstige Grabinschrift, 1872).
Colportage novels
There are five large (many thousands of pages) colportageColportage
Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, religious tracts, etc., by carriers called "colporteurs".The term is an alteration of French comporter, "to peddle" as a portmanteau or pun with the word col , with the resulting meaning "to carry on one's neck". Porter, is from Latin portare,...
novels May wrote mostly pseudonymously or anonymously for the press of H. G. Münchmeyer from 1882 to 1888. When May's authorship of these works emerged, he was publicly confronted, because contemporaneously the novels were seen as indecent, especially as they were written parallel to the commendable works in Deutscher Hausschatz.
- Das Waldröschen (1882–84, a part was later revised for Old Surehand II)
- Die Liebe des Ulanen (1883–85)
- Der verlorne Sohn oder Der Fürst des Elends (1884–86)
- Deutsche Herzen – Deutsche Helden (1885–88, also entitled as Deutsche Herzen, deutsche Helden)
- Der Weg zum Glück (1886–88)
From 1900 to 1906 Münchmeyer’s successor Adalbert Fischer published the first book editions. These were revised by third hand and published under May’s real name instead of using the pseudonym. This edition was not authorised by May and he tried to stop the publication.
Travel stories
In the book series Carl May's Gesammelte Reiseromane, later entiteld Karl May’s Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen, 33 volumes were published from 1892 to 1910 in the press of Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld. Most of them were published before in Deutscher Hausschatz, but some of them were directly written for this series. The most famous titles are the Orient Cycle (volume 1–6) and the WinnetouWinnetou
Winnetou is a fictional Native American hero of several novels written by Karl May in German, including the sequels Winnetou I through Winnetou IV....
-Trilogy
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
(7–9).
Generally there is no reading order, because May himself produced unintentionally chronological inconsistencies. Most of them arose, when he revised earlier texts for the book edition (e. g. within the Winnetou-Trilogy).
- 1. Durch Wüste und Harem (1892, since 1895 entitled as Durch die Wüste)
- 2. Durchs wilde Kurdistan (1892)
- 3. Von Bagdad nach Stambul (1892)
- 4. In den Schluchten des Balkan (1892)
- 5. Durch das Land der Skipetaren (1892)
- 6. Der Schut (1892)
- 7. Winnetou I (1893, temporarily also entitled as Winnetou der Rote Gentleman I)
- 8. Winnetou II (1893, temporarily also entitled as Winnetou der Rote Gentleman II)
- 9. Winnetou III (1893, temporarily also entitled as Winnetou der Rote Gentleman III)
- 10. Orangen und Datteln (1893, an anthologyAnthologyAn anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
) - 11. Am Stillen Ocean (1894, an anthology)
- 12. Am Rio de la Plata (1894)
- 13. In den Cordilleren (1894)
- 14. Old Surehand I (1894)
- 15. Old Surehand II (1895)
- 16. Im Lande des Mahdi I (1896)
- 17. Im Lande des Mahdi II (1896)
- 18. Im Lande des Mahdi III (1896)
- 19. Old Surehand III (1897)
- 20. Satan und Ischariot I (1896)
- 21. Satan und Ischariot II (1897)
- 22. Satan und Ischariot III (1897)
- 23. Auf fremden Pfaden (1897, an anthology)
- 24. „Weihnacht!“ (1897)
- 26. Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen I (1898)
- 27. Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen II (1898)
- 25. Am Jenseits (1899)
- 28–33 are travel stories, which belong to the mature work
There are some shorter travel stories, which were not published within this series (e. g. Eine Befreiung within Die Rose von Kaïrwan, 1894). On this edition (so called “green volumes”) bases the series Karl May’s Illustrierte Reiseerzählungen (illustrated “blue volumes”, since 1907). This edition was revised by May himself and is the definitive edition. It contains just the first thirty volumes which have partly another numbering.
After foundation of the Karl May Press in 1913 in the new series "Karl May's Gesammelte Werke" many volumes were revised (partly radically) and many got new titles. Texts from others than Fehsenfeld Press were added to the new series.
Stories for young readers
These stories were written from 1887 to 1897 for the magazine Der Gute Kamerad. He intentionally wrote for young readers. Most of the stories are set in the Wild West, but here Old Shatterhand is just a figure and not the first-person narrator as he is in the travel stories. The most famous volume is Der Schatz im Silbersee. In the broadest sense the early works Im fernen Westen and Der Waldläufer belong to these category.- Der Sohn des Bärenjägers (1887, since 1890 within Die Helden des Westens)
- Der Geist des Llano estakata (1888, since 1890 correctly entitled as Der Geist des Llano estakado within Die Helden des Westens)
- Kong-Kheou, das Ehrenwort (1888/89, since 1892 entitled as Der blaurote Methusalem)
- Die Sklavenkarawane (1889/90)
- Der Schatz im Silbersee (1890/91)
- Das Vermächtnis des Inka (1891/92)
- Der Oelprinz (1893/94, since 1905 entitled as Der Ölprinz)
- Der schwarze Mustang (1896/97)
Between 1890 and 1899 Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft published them as illustrated book edition.
Parallel to this major work May also published shorter stories and some puzzles anonymously or pseudonymously from 1887 to 1891. These were written mostly to given illustrations. One of the pseudonyms was “Hobble-Frank”, which was a popular character in his stories for the youth with Wild West setting. Also his answers to letters by the readers were published within Der Gute Kamerad.
The Mature work
The so called mature work Spätwerk consists of the publications after May’s travel to the Orient, from 1900 on. Many of them were published in the press of Fehsenfeld. Within the series Karl May’s Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen the volumes 28-33 belong to the mature work.- Himmelsgedanken (1900, poem collection)
- 28. Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III (1902)
- Erzgebirgische Dorfgeschichten (1903, anthology)
- 29. Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen IV (1903)
- 30. Und Friede auf Erden! (1904)
- Babel und Bibel (1906, dramaDramaDrama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
) - 31. Ardistan und Dschinnistan I (1909)
- 32. Ardistan und Dschinnistan II (1909)
- 33. Winnetou IV (1910)
- Mein Leben und Streben (1910, autobiography)
Some shorter stories also belong to the mature work (e. g. Schamah, 1907), also some essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s and articles (e. g. Briefe über Kunst, 1906/07) as well as texts he wrote in the context of lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
s against him, to defend himself before the public (e. g ”Karl May als Erzieher” und “Die Wahrheit über Karl May” oder Die Gegner Karl Mays in ihrem eigenen Lichte, 1902).
Other works
Karl May wrote also musical compositions, especially when he was member of the singing society “Lyra” about 1864. Well known is his version of Ave Maria (together with Vergiss mich nicht collected within Ernste Klänge, 1899).During his last years May hold talks about his philosophic
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
ideas.
- Drei Menschheitsfragen: Wer sind wir? Woher kommen wir? Wohin gehen wir? (LawrenceLawrence, MassachusettsLawrence is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States on the Merrimack River. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a total population of 76,377. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and North Andover to the southeast. It and Salem are...
, 1908) - Sitara, das Land der Menschheitsseele (AugsburgAugsburgAugsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
, 1909) - Empor ins Reich der Edelmenschen (ViennaViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, 1912)
After May’s death there were publishings of his residue: Fragments of stories and dramas, lyrics, musical compositions, his self made library catalogue and mostly letters.
Number of copies and translations
It is stated that Karl May is the “most read writer of German tongue”. The total number of copies published is about 200 millions, half of this are German copies.The first translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
of May’s work was the first half of the Orient Cycle into French 1881 (just ten years after the French-German War), which was published in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. Since that time May’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages including Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and Volapük
Volapük
Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...
. In the 1960s the UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
stated May being the most translated German writer. Outside the German-speaking area he is most popular in the Czech language
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
area, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and the USA he is nearly unknown. In 2001 Nemsi Books Publishing Company located in Pierpont, South Dakota, opened its doors to become one of the first English publishing houses dedicated to the unabridged translations of Karl May's original work.
List of languages: Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
, Brazilian
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
, Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, English (British)
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
, English (American)
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
, Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
, Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, Slovakian, Slovene, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, Volapük
Volapük
Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...
, Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
There are also braille editions
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
and editions read for visually impaired or blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
people.
Influence
Karl May had a substantial influence on a number of well-known German-speaking people - and on the German population itself. The popularity of his writing, and indeed, his (generally German) protagonists, are seen as having filled a lack in the German psyche which had few popular heroes until the 19th Century. His readers longed to escape from an industrialised capitalist society, an escape which May offered. He was noted as having "helped shape the collective German dream of feats far beyond middle-class bounds".The image of Native Americans in Germany is greatly influenced by May. The name Winnetou even has an entry in the main German dictionary Duden
Duden
The Duden is a German dictionary, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880.Currently the Duden is in its 25th edition and published in 12 volumes, each covering different aspects like loan words, etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, etc...
. The wider influence on the populace also surprised post-WWII occupation troops from the US, who realised that thanks to Karl May, "Cowboys and Indians" were familiar concepts to local children (though fantastic and removed from reality).
Many well-known German-speaking people used May’s heroes as models in their childhood. Physicist Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
was a great fan of Karl May's books and is quoted as having said "My whole adolescence stood under his sign. Indeed, even today, he has been dear to me in many a desperate hour…" Many others have given positive statements about their Karl May reading.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was an admirer, who noted that the novels "overwhelmed" him as a boy, going as far as to ensure "a noticeable decline" in his school grades. According to an anonymous friend, Hitler attended the lecture given by May in Vienna in March 1912 and was enthusiastic about the event. Ironically, the lecture was an appeal for peace, also heard by Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
laureate Bertha von Suttner
Bertha von Suttner
Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner was an Austrian novelist, radical pacifist, and the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.-Biography:Suttner was born in Prague, Bohemia, the daughter of an impoverished Austrian Field Marshal,...
. Claus Roxin
Claus Roxin
Claus Roxin is a German jurist. He is one of the most influential dogmatists of German penal law and has gained national and international reputation in this field...
doubts the anonymous description, because Hitler had told much about May, but not that he had seen him. Hitler defended May against critics in the men's hostel where he lived in Vienna, as the evidence of May's earlier time in jail had come to light; although it was true, Hitler confessed, that May had never visited the sites of his American adventure stories, this made him a greater writer in Hitler's view since it showed the author's powers of imagination. May died suddenly only ten days after the lecture, leaving the young Hitler deeply upset.
Hitler later recommended the books to his generals and had special editions distributed to soldiers at the front, praising Winnetou as an example of "tactical finesse and circumspection", though some note that the latter claims of using the books as military guidance are not substantiated. However, as told by Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, "when faced by seemingly hopeless situations, he [Hitler] would still reach for these stories," because "they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible for elderly people." This influence on the German 'Fuehrer' was later castigated by Klaus Mann
Klaus Mann
- Life and work :Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a...
, a German writer who accused May of having been a form of 'mentor' for Hitler.
In his admiration Hitler ignored May's Christian and humanitarian approach and views completely, not mentioning his – in some novels – relatively sympathetic description of Jews and persons of non-white race.
The real or imagined fate of Native Americans was abused during the world wars for anti-American propaganda. The National Socialists in particular tried to use May’s popularity and his work for their purposes. May was criticised as having offered those materials for exploitation by the Nazis. Several novels of Karl May were re-edited in an antisemitic style during the years of Nazism and led to serious misunderstandings about May's original intentions. Due to these undesirable uses of his books, the authorities of the new Eastern Germany were less approving of May’s work, and officially considered him a "chauvinist" - though this did not effect his popularity, and during the 1980s there was a Karl May renaissance.
Impact on other authors
The German writer Carl ZuckmayerCarl Zuckmayer
Carl Zuckmayer was a German writer and playwright.-Biography:Born in Nackenheim in Rheinhessen, he was four years old when his family moved to Mainz. With the outbreak of World War I, he finished school with a facilitated "emergency"-Abitur and volunteered for military service...
was intrigued by the May’s great Apache chief and named his daughter Maria Winnetou (* 1926).
Max von der Grün
Max von der Grün
Max von der Grün was a German novelist.Max von der Grün was born in Bayreuth and grew up in Mitterteich. After a clerical apprenticeship, he became a paratrooper during World War II in 1944. He was captured by U.S...
reported that he read Karl May as a young boy. When asked whether reading May's books had given him anything, he answered: "No. It took something away from me. The fear of bulky books that is."
Also Heinz Werner Höber
Heinz Werner Höber
Heinz Werner Höber was a very prolific pulp fiction author who produced many novels about the fictitious FBI-agent Jerry Cotton and eventually sued his publisher because he felt he had been entitled to receive royalties.- Early life :...
, twofold Glauser
Friedrich Glauser
Friedrich Glauser was a German-language Swiss writer. He was a morphine and opium addict for most of his life. In his first novel Gourrama, written between 1928 and 1930, he treated his own experiences at the French Foreign Legion...
prize winner, was a self-confessed follower of Karl May: "When I was about 12 years old I wrote my first novel on Native Americans which was of course from the beginning to the end completely stolen from Karl May." He had pleaded with friends to get him to Radebeul "because Radebeul meant Karl May". There he was deeply impressed by the museum and stated: "My great country fellowman from Hohenstein-Ernstthal and his immortal heros have never left me ever since."
Adaptations
After Karl May published the whole poem Ave Maria in 1896 at least 19 other persons wrote musical versions. Other poems, especially from the collection Himmelsgedanken were set into music. As present for May Carl Ball wrote “harpHarp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
clangs” for the drama Babel und Bibel. The Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck
Othmar Schoeck
Othmar Schoeck was a Swiss composer and conductor.He was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles, though he also wrote a number of operas and instrumental compositions including two string quartets and...
made an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
from Der Schatz im Silbersee in the age of eleven. Others wrote music inspired by May’s works (e. g. around Winnetou’s death).
The first stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
adaptation was Winnetou by Hermann Dimmler in 1919. Revisions by him and Ludwig Körner were played in the following years. After the Second World War first adaptations were conducted in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. In East Germany they started not before 1984. Different novel revisions are played on outdoor stages since the 1940s. The most famous “Karl May Festivals” are held every summer in Bad Segeberg
Bad Segeberg
Bad Segeberg is a German town of 16,000 inhabitants, located in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, capital of the district Segeberg. It is situated approximately northeast of Hamburg, and west of Lübeck.It is famous for its annual Karl-May-Festival...
(since 1952) and in Lennestadt-Elspe (since 1958). At both places movie actor Pierre Brice
Pierre Brice
Pierre Brice is a French actor, mainly known for his role as fictional Apache-chief Winnetou in German Karl May films.- Life and films :...
played Winnetou. Another festival is on the rock stage in Rathen
Rathen
Rathen is a village in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, in Saxony, Germany, about 35 km southeast of Dresden on the Elbe River. Rathen has between 400 and 500 inhabitants....
, in the Saxon Switzerland
Saxon Switzerland
Saxon Switzerland is a hilly climbing area and national park around the Elbe valley south-east of Dresden in Saxony, Germany. Together with the Bohemian Switzerland in the Czech Republic it forms the Elbe Sandstone Mountains....
near Radebeul (1940, then since 1984). Many other stages in Austria and Germany show or showed plays after Karl May. In 2006 these were 14 stages. May’s own drama Babel und Bibel has not been played on a bigger stage yet.
Karl May’s friends Marie Luise Droop and her husband Adolf Droop among others founded in cooperation with the Karl May Press the production company
Production company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
“Ustad-Film” (the name refers to May himself in Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III/IV) in 1920. They produced three silent movies
Silent Movies
Silent Movies are 13 solo guitar compositions by Marc Ribot released September 28, 2010 on Pi Recordings.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "For those interested in one of the more compelling and quietly provocative and graceful guitar records of 2010,...
(Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses
On the Brink of Paradise
On the Brink of Paradise is a 1920 German film directed by Josef Stein and featuring Carl de Vogt in the title role of Kara Ben Nemsi. Béla Lugosi appeared in a supporting role...
, Die Todeskarawane
Caravan of Death (film)
Caravan of Death is a 1920 silent German film directed by Josef Stein and featuring Carl de Vogt as Kara Ben Nemsi. Béla Lugosi played a supporting role...
and Die Teufelsanbeter
The Devil Worshippers
The Devil Worshippers is a six-chapter 1920 silent German film directed by Marie Luise Droop and featuring Carl de Vogt in the title-role of Kara Ben Nemsi. Later horror-star Béla Lugosi is being seen in one of his first supporting roles in a film...
) after the Orientcycle in 1920, which are lost. Due to the low success “Ustad-Film” went bankrupt
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
in the following year. The first sound movie Durch die Wüste
Durch Die Wuste
Durch die Wüste is the first full-length solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, best known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and Aquarello. The title is German for "Through the Desert."...
was shown in 1936. “Die Sklavenkarawane” (1958) and its sequel “Der Löwe von Babylon” (1959) were the first colour movies. Famous is the Karl May movie wave from 1962–1968, which was one of the most successful German movie series. While most of the 17 movies were Wild West movies (beginning with “Der Schatz im Silbersee”), three were based on the Orientcycle and two on Das Waldröschen. Most of these movies were made separately by the two competitors Horst Wendlandt
Horst Wendlandt
Horst Wendlandt was a German film producer. He produced 99 films between 1956 and 2002.He was born and died in Berlin, Germany.-Selected filmography:* Pappa ante Portas * L'as des as * Lola...
and Artur Brauner
Artur Brauner
Artur "Atze" Brauner is a polish film producer and entrepreneur. He was born to a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. Artur and his brother Wolf survived the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union, then emigrated to Berlin after the war. As a young man he saw Fritz Lang's film The Testament of Dr...
. Following actors played main characters in several movies of the series: Lex Barker
Lex Barker
Lex Barker was an American actor best known for playing Tarzan of the Apes and leading characters from Karl May's novels.-Early life:...
(Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi, Karl Sternau), Pierre Brice
Pierre Brice
Pierre Brice is a French actor, mainly known for his role as fictional Apache-chief Winnetou in German Karl May films.- Life and films :...
(Winnetou), Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger was an English-American film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.-Early life:He was born James Lablache Stewart in Old...
(Old Surehand), Milan Srdoč (Old Wabble) and Ralf Wolter
Ralf Wolter
-Selected filmography:* Peter Voss, Hero of the Day * Conny und Peter machen Musik * Freddy und das Lied der Südsee * The Heathens of Kummerow * Hannibal Brooks * Heintje: A Heart Goes on a Journey...
(Sam Hawkens, Hadschi Halef Omar, André Hasenpfeffer). The film score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
by Martin Böttcher
Martin Böttcher
Martin Böttcher is a German composer, arranger and conductor.-The beginning:Böttcher began taking piano lessons at an early age. But his first passion was flying, and he wanted to become a test pilot...
has also become famous and together with the landscape of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, where most movies were shot, it participate to the great success of the series. After the series more movies for cinema (“Die Spur führt zum Silbersee”, 1990) or TV (e. g. “Das Buschgespenst”, 1986) and TV-series (e. g. “Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi
Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi (TV series)
Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi was a German television series broadcast from 1973 through 1975. It featured a hero inspired by British explorer Sir Richard Burton .The protagonist was portrayed by Karl Michael Vogler...
”, 1973) were produced. Most Karl May movies are far from the original, some even contain nothing more than May’s main figures.
No other German writer has more audio dramas than Karl May, which have a number of about 300. Günther Bibo wrote the first one (Der Schatz im Silbersee) in 1929. A greater wave was during the 1960s. There are also Czech and Danish audio dramas.
After the ending of the term of copyright and with the success of the Karl May movie series of the 1960s the first German comic wave occurred. A second comic wave came during the 1970s. The first and qualitative best German comic was Winnetou (# 1-8) / Karl May (# 9-52) (1963–1965). It was drawn by Helmut Nickel and Harry Ehrt and published by Walter Lehning Verlag. The most comprehensive comic was published by the press Standaard Uitgeverij
Standaard Uitgeverij
Standaard Uitgeverij is a Belgian publisher, and the leading publisher in the Dutch language market of Flanders.-History:In 1919, the Standaard group was created, mainly consisting of a chain of bookshops , a newspaper and a publishing house, the Standaard Uitgeverij...
. This Flemish
Flemish
Flemish can refer to anything related to Flanders, and may refer directly to the following articles:*Flemish, an informal, though linguistically incorrect, name of any kind of the Dutch language as spoken in Belgium....
comic Karl May was drawn by the studio of Willy Vandersteen
Willy Vandersteen
Willy Vandersteen was a Belgian creator of comic books. In a career spanning 50 years, he created a large studio and published more than 1,000 comic albums in over 25 series, selling more than 200 million copies worldwide....
in 87 issues from 1862–1987. Also in other countries comics were produced: e. g. Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
(often reduced to the wild west plot), Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
.
In 1988 Der Schatz im Silbersee was read by Gert Westphal and published as audiobook. “Wann sehe ich dich wieder, du lieber, lieber Winnetou?“ (1995) is a compendium of Karl May texts read by Hermann Wiedenroth. Since 1998 different presses (e. g. Karl May Press) have released an increasing number of about 50 audiobooks. Another famous reader is movie actor Peter Sodann
Peter Sodann
Peter Sodann is a German actor, director and politician. He was the Left Party's nominee for the 2009 presidential election, but was not considered a serious candidate by the German media.-Early life:...
.
Karl May and his life were basis for screen adaptations: Freispruch für Old Shatterhand (1965, dir. Hans Heinrich) and Karl May (1974, dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is a German film director, whose best known film is his lengthy feature, Hitler: A Film from Germany.- Early life :...
) as well as a 6-episode TV series Karl May (1992, dir. Klaus Überall). There are also novels with or about Karl May, e. g. “Swallow, mein wackerer Mustang” (1980) by Erich Loest
Erich Loest
Erich Loest German writer who was born in Mittweida, Saxony. He also writes under following pseudonyms Hans Walldorf, Bernd Diksen and Waldemar Naß.- Works :* Jungen, die übrig blieben, Leipzig 1950...
, “Vom Wunsch, Indianer zu werden. Wie Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
Karl May traf und trotzdem nicht in Amerika landete“ (1994) by Peter Henisch, “Old Shatterhand in Moabit” (1994) by Walter Püschel and “Karl May und der Wettermacher” (2001) by Jürgen Heinzerling. A stage adaptation is “Die Taschenuhr des Anderen“ by Willi Olbrich.
Copies, parodies, and sequels
Already during May’s lifetime he has been copiedCopying
Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based only on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog forms of information, copying is only possible to a limited degree of accuracy, which depends on the quality of the...
or parodied
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
. While some just wrote similar wild west stories to participate on his literarily success (e. g. Franz Treller), others even used May’s name to publish their works. Also today novels with May figures are published. In “Hadschi Halef Omar” (2010) Jörg Kastner describes the first contact of the titular character with Kara Ben Nemsi. Franz Kandolf wrote “In Mekka” (1923) a sequel to Am Jenseits, which is official part of Karl May’s Gesammelte Werke as vol. 50. An alternative to Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III/IV by Heinz Grill (“Die Schatten des Schah-in-Schah”, 2006) has been written in the adventurous style of the first parts. As sequel to Winnetou IV May had planned Winnetous Testament. A series of eight volumes with this title has been written by Jutta Laroche and Reinhard Marheinecke. Other famous writers of sequels are Friederike Chudoba, Otto Emersleben, Thomas Jeier
Thomas Jeier
Thomas Jeier was raised in Frankfurt and started writing prose as a student. He proved himself an expert of North America's present and past by publishing travel guides, books on history, biographies and novels . He was translated and published in the USA too.-External links:* ***- References :...
, Edmund Theil and Iris Wörner (Her pseudonym Nscho-tschi refers to Winnetou’s sister).
The 2001 film Der Schuh des Manitu
Der Schuh des Manitu
Der Schuh des Manitu is a 2001 German parody of western films. Directed by Michael Herbig, it is a film adaptation of the Winnetou sketches from his Pro Sieben television show Bullyparade.-Background:...
by Michael Herbig is a parody on the Karl May Films of the 1960s and spoof extensively the characters and motives of May's Winnetou trilogy.
Karl May Foundation
In his will, May made his second wife Klara his sole heiress. He instructed that after her death all of his property and any future earnings from his work should go to a foundation. This foundation should support the education of gifted poor people and help writerWriter
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
s, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s and editor
Editor
The term editor may refer to:As a person who does editing:* Editor in chief, having final responsibility for a publication's operations and policies* Copy editing, making formatting changes and other improvements to text...
s, who through no fault of their own, had got into financial difficulties. One year after May’s death on 5 March 1913, Klara May established the "Karl May Foundation" ("Karl-May-Stiftung"). Contributions are made since 1917. With contracts of inheritance and wills of Klara May the property of both went to the Karl May Foundation. Following her instructions, the foundation established a Karl May Museum to maintain the Villa “Shatterhand“, the estates, the collections (the museum was founded during her lifetime) and to maintain May's tomb.
In 1960, the Karl May Foundation leaved the Karl May Press, which belonged to her by two-thirds. Thereby the press got parts of May’s properties.
Karl May Press
On 1 July 1913 Klara May, Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld (May’s main publisher) and the juristJurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
Euchar Albrecht Schmid established the “Foundation Press Fehsenfeld & Co.” (“Stiftungs-Verlag Fehsenfeld & Co.“) in Radebeul. In 1915 the name changed into “Karl May Press“ (”Karl-May-Verlag“ = KMV). They ended the civil disputes (e. g. about the colportage novels) and got the rights of works from others presses (e. g the colportage novels and the stories for the youth). Third hand revisions of these texts were added to the series Karl May’s Gesammelte Reiseerzählungen, which was renamed to Karl May’s Gesammelte Werke (und Briefe). The existing 33 volumes of the original series also were (partly radically) revised. Until 1945 there were 65 volumes. The press nearly only publishes works of Karl May and secondary literature. Beside the Gesammelte Werke (the classical “green volumes”), which have 91 volumes today, the press has a huge reprint programme.
Other targets of the young press were rehabilitation of May against literary criticism and support of the Karl May Foundation. Since the contractual quitting of Fehsenfeld in 1921 and the separation from the Karl May Foundation (as Klara May’s heir) in 1960 the press lies in hands of the Schmid family. Due to the attitudes of the authorities of the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany towards May (his works should not be printed) the press moved to Bamberg
Bamberg
Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...
(West Germany) in 1959. After the German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
the press has a second place of residence in Radebeul since 1996. When in 1963 the term of copyright ended the press lost its monopoly. The press started a commercialisation of May. The name “Karl May” is registered trade mark of the “Karl May Verwaltungs- und Vertriebs-GmbH”, which belongs to the Karl May Press.
Radebeul
The “Karl May Museum” in Radebeul started on 1 December 1928 in “Villa Bear Fat” (Villa Bärenfett) as a museum about history and life of Native Americans. This villa was built as a log house in the garden of Villa “Shatterhand” after ideas of the widely travelled artistArtist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Patty Frank (Ernst Tobis). Karl May’s collection about Native Americans, which was added by Klara May, and the whole collection of Patty Frank were joined, therefore Frank became the first curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
and got life estate in “Villa Bear Fat”. During the time of the GDR the museum was renamed “Native Americans Museum of the Karl May Foundation” in 1956 and Karl May related exhibits were removed in 1962.
After rethinking of the GDR authorities the museum got its former name back and the street even was renamed “Karl May Street” in 1984. While “Villa Bear Fat” further on contains the exhibition about Native Americans, where the fireplace room today is used for events, Villa “Shatterhand” shows an exhibition about Karl May since 1985. Beside the library, which can be used for research, the work room and parlour
Parlour
Parlour , from the French word parloir, from parler , denotes an "audience chamber". In parts of the United Kingdom and the United States, parlours are common names for certain types of food service houses, restaurants or special service areas, such as tattoo parlors...
(so called “Sascha Schneider Room”) are originally arranged. Among others the replicas of the “famous guns” and a bust of Winnetou are shown. Opposite to Villa “Shatterhand” May’s fruit garden has become the “Karl May Grove” (“Karl-May-Hain”).
Hohenstein-Ernstthal
The “Karl May House” (“Karl-May-Haus”) is the about 300 year old weaver houseWeaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
, where May was born. During the May renaissance in the GDR it has become a memorial and museum since 12 March 1985. Beside the permanent exhibition about May’s life rebuild rooms like a weaver chamber and non-German book editions are shown. The garden has been arranged according to May’s description in his biography. Opposite the house lays the “International Karl May Heritage Center” (“Karl-May-Begegnungsstätte”), which is used for events and special exhibitions. In Hohenstein-Ernstthal
Hohenstein-Ernstthal
Hohenstein-Ernstthal is a town in the Zwickau rural district, Free State of Saxony, Germany. The towns of Hohenstein and Ernstthal were united in 1898, and the town is either known by its hyphenated form, or simply called Hohenstein....
, which is called “Karl May Home Town” since 1992, every May related place has a commemorative plaque
Commemorative plaque
A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other vertical surface, and bearing text in memory of an important figure or event...
. These places are connected by a “Karl May Path” (“Karl-May-Wanderweg”). Outside the city lays the “Karl May Cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...
” (“Karl-May-Höhle”), where May found shelter during his criminal time.
Societies
Some associations have been founded during Karl May’s lifetime, e. g. “Karl May Clubs” in the 1890s. Today, various work groups, societies, and clubs are devoting their activities to Karl May's life and work, and organize related events. While early associations often understood their role as rendering homage to the writer or defending him against critics, they focus today more on research. Most societies are in German-speaking areas (e. g. booster clubs of the museums), but some can also be found in the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. While the societies are responsible for the release of most Karl May-related periodicals (e. g Der Beobachter an der Elbe, Karl-May-Haus Information, Wiener Karl-May-Brief, Karl May in Leipzig), the magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
Karl May & Co. is published independently.
The “Karl May Society” (“Karl May Gesellschaft e.V.” = KMG) is the largest society with approximately 1800 members. The KMG was founded on 22 March 1969. One of its main objectives is to conduct research on Karl May’s life and work and to promote his recognition in the official history of literature and the general public. Among the various publications of the society are the Jahrbuch, the Mitteilungen, the Sonderhefte der Karl-May-Gesellschaft, and the KMG-Nachrichten as well as a huge reprint programmme. Since 2008 and in cooperation with the Karl May Foundation and the Karl May Press, the KMG publishes the critical edition of “Karl Mays Werke”. This project had been initiated by Hans Wollschläger
Hans Wollschläger
thumb|right|150px| Signature, 1988Hans Wollschläger was a German writer, translator, historian, and editor of German literature.-Biography:...
and Hermann Wiedenroth in 1987. After initial disruptions and changes also regarding the printing the project is now conceptualized to more than 99 volumes.
Works
- Karl Mays Werke: historisch-kritische Ausgabe. Für die Karl-May-Stiftung herausgegeben von Hermann Wiedenroth und Hans Wollschläger. F.Greno, Nördlingen 1987 ff. / then by Haffmans: Zürich / then by Bücherhaus: Bargfeld 1993-2007 / now: Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg and Radebeul (Karl May's Works: historical critical edition. On behalf of the Karl May Foundation edited by Hermann Wiedenroth and Hans WollschlägerHans Wollschlägerthumb|right|150px| Signature, 1988Hans Wollschläger was a German writer, translator, historian, and editor of German literature.-Biography:...
/ changed publisher 3 times / The German National Catalogue presently shows 58 entries under the name of this project, including improved re-editions, supplementary volumes, documents etc.). - Mein Leben und Streben (autobiography). Freiburg i. Br., Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, 1910. Reprint: Hildesheim and New York, Olms Presse, 1975 (third edition 1997), with preface, comments, epilogue, index for subjects, persons and geograhical names by Hainer Plaul. Online version in English
Secondary literature
- Bugmann, Marlies: Savage To Saint, The Karl May Story. BookSurge Publishing, 2008, ISBN 1-4196-5585-X, ISBN 978-1-4196-5585-2 (First English biography of Karl May).
- Frayling, Christopher: Spaghetti westerns: cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone. Routledge, London and Boston 1981; revised edition I.B.Taurus, London and New York 2006, ISBN 978-1-84511-207-3.
- Michalak, Michael: My Life and My Mission. Nemsi Books Publishing, 2007, ISBN 0-9718164-7-6, ISBN 978-0-9718164-7-3 (English autobiography of Karl May).
- Plaul, Hainer: Illustrierte Karl-May-Bibliographie. Unter Mitwirkung von Gerhard Klußmeier. Saur, Munich, London, New York, Paris 1989, ISBN 3-598-07258-9 (BibliographyBibliographyBibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
in ). - Sammons, Jeffrey L.: Ideology, nemesis, fantasy: Charles Sealsfield, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Karl May, and other German novelists of America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1998, ISBN 0-8078-8121-X.
- Sudhoff, Dieter & Steinmetz, Hans-Dieter: Karl-May-Chronik (5 Volumes + companion book). Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg and Radebeul 2005-2006, ISBN 3-7802-0170-4 (Chronicle in ).
- Ueding, Gert (Editor): Karl-May-Handbuch. Second enlarged and revised edition. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-1813-3 (Handbook in ).
- Wohlgschaft, Hermann: Karl May – Leben und Werk (3 Volumes). Bücherhaus, Bargfeld 2005, ISBN 3-930713-93-4 (Most extensive biography in ; Online-Version of first edition).
- Wollschläger, HansHans Wollschlägerthumb|right|150px| Signature, 1988Hans Wollschläger was a German writer, translator, historian, and editor of German literature.-Biography:...
: Karl May. Grundriß eines gebrochenen Lebens. (First edition under a different title 1965;) Revised edition Diogenes, Zürich 1976; latest edition Wallstein, Göttingen 2004 (303 pp.), ISBN 3-89244-740-3 (Major biography in ).
External links
Life and works
- Karl May Gesellschaft (K. M. Society) Literature of the KMG, biography, bibliography of the secondary literature, lexicon of figures, and works in full text / English Homepage of the Society..
- Karl May bibliography by Wolfgang Hermesmeier .
- Bibliographic database of editions since 1963 .
- Karl Friedrich May Papers at Gettysburg College.
- Karl-May-Wiki .
Adaptations
- Overview of Karl May movies .
- Database of Karl May audio dramas and audiobooks .
- Database of Karl May festivals .
Institutions
- Karl May Foundation .
- Karl May Press .
- Karl May Museum in Radebeul (Flyer in English).
- Karl May House in Hohenstein-Ernstthal (Museum) .
- Karl May Society ( see above).
- Overview of German and international societies .
Compositions by Karl May
..