In the year 1842, in a small town in Saxony called Ernstthal, a son was born to Christiane Wilhelmine May, née Weise, and her husband Heinrich August May. The child was named and baptised Karl Friedrich. In his second year, Karl went blind, probably due to insufficient nutriment. He was cured but, according to his biographic commitment and also to the investigation of scholars and teachers of literature, in this shaping period his phantasy was goaded by a beloved, story-telling grandmother from the father’s side, Johanne Christiane Kretzschmar, as his giftedness was also fostered (and maybe misled) by his father, when the boy had finally learned to see, to read and write.
The family was bitterly poor, the father being a linen weaver in times when cheap products, mechanically produced, from England flooded the market and impoverished the domestic workers. Nevertheless, the May family, acknowledging the talents of the child, took to the classical proletarian story of social advancement that stated, ‘my children shall be better off than we are’. The father made the boy read, write down and learn by heart whatever of books he brought home and put before the child’s eyes. The town’s parson encouraged him, too, and the cantor saw to his first music experiences and taught him violin, organ, and harmonics. In addition, Karl enjoyed private language courses, and worked as a skittle boy in the village’s tavern to finance them.
The mother, having gained a small inheritance, used it to qualify in a six-month course as a midwife and finished with a superior certificate. Karl, however, to attend the teachers’ college, was dependant on the financial help of the territorial prince, the Count Heinrich von Schönburg-Hinterglauchau. He was dismissed from the first seminary in Waldenburg because of the theft of six candles, pardoned and then allowed to finish the education in Plauen. His career as a teacher came to an abrupt end when he was arrested during the Christmas holidays, which he should have spent at home with his family. He had brought with him a fob watch, which he claimed was lent to him by his roommate, the bookkeeper of the factory, the apprentices of which Karl was to tutor.
He was reported to the police by the clerk, charged with ‘unlawful use of a foreign object’ (furtum usus), and sentenced to a six-week detention in Chemnitz. He was cancelled from the country’s list of teachers. After his release, he lived for the following two years (1862 – 1864) again with his family in Ernstthal, giving private lessons, leading a men’s choir called ‘Lyra’, composing and writing, and organising petty evening entertainments where he declaimed classical and contemporary German poetry.
But all these occupations did not suffice to make a living and he began to perpetrate one fraud or the other. Those impostures had all the same trademark: He slipped into the roles of detectives, policemen, attorneys, physicians and thus as an imposter obtained money which he confiscated as counterfeit, cigars, clothing and furs which he kept or sold on, without paying for, of course. In the year 1865, at the end of February, he was caught while trying to pawn a coat and sentenced to a four years’ detention in the workhouse of Zwickau.
He was released half a year ahead of time, went home, tried to find some income, also as an author of humorous stories, found none, and was regarded suspiciously in his hometown. So, it all started over again. What he hustled and chiselled out of the townsfolk and villagers of the surroundings was not worth mentioning, though the stories and aliases he produced to cover up his deeds become more and more fantastic. He was caught, escaped by shattering the handcuffs, hid, tramped about, was caught again and sentenced to a four years’ time, which he served from 1870 to 1874 in the jail of Waldheim. Under the instructions and the influence of the prison's Catholic catechist, he found his way, preparing to become a writer after having done his time.
And so it happened. The year 1875 finds Karl May as an editorial journalist serving the publisher Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer, who had recognised the narrative talents and realised it would be easy to shape the erstwhile convict to the needs of the company. And the now 32-year-old was thankful and did what he was told to do and wrote what he was told to write. It was his second chance to establish a civil livelihood and he seized it.
He moved to Dresden and worked for two years for Münchmeyer, but decided to leave on various grounds, worked one year for Bruno Radelli, doing the same job for an equal-minded publisher and then lived as a freelancer for another year. In this time, the first relations, in which Winnetou appeared, were published. In the year 1879, Karl May was engaged by Friedrich Pustet, a Catholic publisher whose company, founded in 1826 in order to compete against the liberal protestant ‘Gartenlaube’, still exists, nowadays managed by a member of the family, Fritz Pustet. May now was not engaged as a journalist but, having gained some reputation, as an author. He was paid by Pustet immediately for the incoming manuscripts and was ensured they would be printed.
In the following years, May married his friend, Emma Pollmer, and worked, parallel to the Pustet journals, mainly on ‘Der deutsche Hausschatz’, but also for other publications, including ‘Der gute Kamerad’ and, for a second time, for Münchmeyer, supplying him over the years 1882 to 1888 with pulp fiction for the colportage. Each week, a booklet of 24 pages, comprising the text (to be continued over one or two years) of a voluminous crime and love novel and with cheap illustrations, was delivered to the subscribers. Five big tomes were thus produced. This production, which May was tricked and persuaded into, turned out later to become the cause for much grievance, being the background for blaming him as a writer of pornographic issues.
Karl May himself turned out to be a writing maniac. But he followed a strict plan, that was first schemed during his detention in Zwickau and then undertaken in Waldheim, from where he sent his first stories home to his parents, who contacted publishers, among them Münchmeyer. May described his literary plans later, in 1910, in ‘Mein Leben und Streben’ (My Life and Quest), and reconstructed an order through which he had allegedly arranged all his works under the goal of improving mankind by his noble paragons. Equally he complained the fates of the Orient, the decay of its olden civilisations which had nourished and enhanced the West in bygone times, and of the Indian race.
In his first Münchmeyer period, he founded new journals: ‘Schacht und Hütte’ (Shaft and Mill), ‘Das deutsche Familienblatt’ (The German Family’s Pages), and ‘Feierstunden’ (Solemn Hours, but the title of the paper can also be translated into After-Work Hours, stressing the German pun). Stories from the Wild West were published in the Familienblatt, whereas Feierstunden were earmarked for stories from the Middle East. In the works of the Pustet period, he changed to more voluminous formats and produced, in the 1880s, not only for Münchmeyer, but equally for Pustet, large extensive novels. But there is a difference to be remarked. While the literary standard of the Münchmeyer items was low, the other contributions developed their own life, in the true sense of the word.
While May let his famous character, Wild West hero Old Shatterhand, appear in the first stories and tales ‘for the youth’ like ‘Der Schatz im Silbersee’ (The Silverlake Treasure) or ‘Der Ölprinz ’ (The Oil-Prince) in the third person, he later changed to the prospect of the first-person story teller. But it was not only the legerdemain of a gifted narrator. It seems that Karl May was overtaken by his own phantasy, and by the traumatic experiences of his youth, by his longing for social recognition, and by his childish imagination of omnipotence. So, he came in for the qualities of his fabled super heroes, until he identified himself with his own fictitious characters. The climax was reached with the three-volume novel ‘Die Felsenburg (The Rocky Fortress), Krüger Bei, Die Jagd auf den Milionendieb (Hunting down the Thief of Millions)’, first published in the Hausschatz, then as ‘Satan und Ischariot I – III’ (Satan and Ischariot) in the Fehsenfeld edition.
Karl May was, to be specific, contacted in the year 1891 by the publisher (and admirer) Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, who offered to release his works as a series of books. So, May was now working for two publishers, producing new pieces for Pustet’s Hausschatz while revising his old works or writing new ones, in order to conclude different items into one novel, as he did with the Winnetou novels, the first volume of which was completely and newly rewritten to introduce the heroes of the formerly-separated stories, now compiled into the two other tomes.
In the above-mentioned novel, a story of crime and love taking place in America, Germany and Africa as well, Karl May, the Herr Doktor, attending a men’s choir, is called by Winnetou in Radebeul to convoy him to Africa in pursuit of evildoers and in help of protégés. In Africa, Winnetou’s blood-brother Old Shatterhand turns out to be Kara ben Nemsi, to be sure, and back in America, Old Shatterhand betrays his surname as May.
In the mid-1890s nothing seemed to impede him. He bragged and strutted, sent photographs
in which he posed as Old Shatterhand (Dr. Karl May) with the silver gun of Winnetou, showed in lectures his scars, answered letters with the confirmation that he had lived through all the adventures he had told of in his books. He even dispensed locks of Winnetou’s hair. All the petty offences of his youth, the showing-off as a detective (Polizeilieutenant von Wolframsdorf), a physician (Dr. med Heilig), a rich planter (Albin Wadenbach from Martinique), can now be performed under the shield of a respectable existence, protected by the screen of his prominence. So, the history of his life recurred.
The breakdown came, as it must, and it came twofold. Karl May undertook a long journey (from March 1899 to July 1900) to the Middle East and Asia, and was struck by two nervous breakdowns when he realised the huge gap between the phantasy world he had made up for himself and which he was promulgating to his readers and fans, and the dull reality of imperialism, tourism and complete lack of heroism. This experience afflicted his soul, body and self-esteem, but when he had overcome the disease and returned home, he was full of plans for a new Karl May and a new literary production.
All his previous works were declared to be only antecedents of what should now become his real task: To lead his readers to the highest possible moral level. He had written all the tales, stories, and novels only to gather this huge readership, this grand number of followers, that now would be confronted with the real Karl May and his message of love, peace and understanding, the proclamation of the Edelmensch; the sublime human being. And he got down to work again. But this work would be hindered by the second breakdown.
The well-known journalist Fedor Mamroth, a feuilletonist and writer himself (author of stage plays, together with the musician Otto Weiß, successful in his days, and author of travelogues, too), attacked Karl May in some squibs of the Frankfurter Zeitung (The Frankfurt Journal) in June and July 1899 and rebuked him for his enactments. Mamroth was an expert, as he had formerly, during his time in Vienna, encouraged and promoted Arthur Schnitzler, the young Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, and other poets, and so he explicitly conceded the talent of the narrator, but he never would put up with all the false stories May had conveyed about his own person and life, his deeds, journeys, and adventures.
It was the first attack on Karl May, but the only one to allow for the literarily rather considerable level of his talent. The rest of the attacks that led to appearances in court, consisted of slander, making public the sins of his youth, involving his divorced wife (May had married again, this time to his private secretary and the widow of his friend, Richard Plöhn), and even of blackmail. And they ruined the health of Karl May, though they were not too successful legally. He died shortly after a last lecture on his image of Edelmensch (The Sublime Humane Being), which he gave in Vienna 1912.
So far for the live of Karl May, as it can be seen in numerous biographies and surveys. The stress lies in these authors and scolars (e. g. Hans Wollschläger, a co-founder of the Karl May society, or Heinz Stolte, the first to write a thesis on Karl May, or Arno Schmidt, a most psychologically influenced author and scribe, who wrote an elegant, albeit rather false analysis of May) on the singular personalitiy of Karl May and his subjectivity. As a contrast I recommend a biography by Christian Heerman (‘Der Mann, der Old Shatterhand war’ [The Man who Was Old Shatterhand], Verlag der Nation 1988, Berlin [GDR]) which stresses the social facts and circumstances, for example the involvement of May’s father in the 1848 revolutionary incidents.
After all, Karl May was dead and buried, buried against his will in a grave his second wife had had constructed for her first husband, May’s friend Richard Plöhn, for her mother and for herself – and for Karl May, too. He himself had wanted to be buried in the garden of his house. But the authorities opposed – so back to what was schemed by Klara. I have told sweepingly in the first part about Karl May’s life. Now let’s have a look at its aftermath.
His considerable fortune went to his second wife and to a trust to be founded in 1913, the Karl May Stiftung. There must have been an illegitimate daughter, called Helene, from a liaison with a certain Martha Vogel, May had had before his marriage with Emma, his first wife. The name Martha Vogel, by the way, appears in two novels. But though the child was talked of time and again, Helene had never been mentioned after the death of Klara May, the second wife, in the year 1944, and her existence had been disavowed, perhaps for causes of heritage, as witnesses in the 1950s insinuated. A daughter of this child Helene died in 1986, making no claims though being convinced that she was a grandchild of our author.
The widow Klara May, his publisher Fehsenfeld, and Euchar Albrecht Schmid founded in the same year 1913 the publishing house Verlag der Karl-May-Stiftung Fehsenfeld & Co, which was renamed into Karl May Verlag in 1915. The author’s house and that of his wife, the Villa ‘Shatterhand’ (the quotation marks were set originally in this way by May) became partly a museum. Klara May inhabited the rest of the house until her death. In its garden, the German circus artist, performer, researcher on Indian culture, collector and traveller, Patty Frank, originally Ernst Johann Franz Tobis, was allowed to erect a hut in the American log cabin style, called Villa Bärenfett (House of Bear’s Lard), in exchange for the donation of his ethnographical collection to the Karl May Museum. He hence lived here, married Marie Barthel, the housekeeper of Klara May, in 1941, and was well-known for his witty guided tours through the museum.
The name Bärenfett was first used by May in a short story in 1888 in Der gute Kamerad. It was the fictive home of one character of May’s texts for young readers, called Hobble-Frank. This fellow is introduced as a scout and trapper in the Wild West, hailing from Saxony and returning and retiring from his adventures as a well-to-do man who had made his fortune abroad and now lived a life of ease in Dresden. In the Kamerad, he answers willingly the letters of the readers. When requests are made where his home can be found and when his visiting hours are, he makes excuses, writing in the paper in answer to the letter to the editor, that he has been ordered to the sultan of ‘Zschanzibar’ to teach him Saxon German and that he took his doorbell and name plate with him, to attach them to his tent in Africa.
We find here the first signs of a literal identification of Karl May with the characters fabricated by him. Though it must be remarked, of course, that this could not have happened, if the publisher had not agreed with this gimmick (if it was not ordered). A similar deception can be found made by Münchmeyer, who addressed and presented his editor as Herr Doktor. May took over this presumption, called himself a Dr. Phil. (doctor of philosophy), as he was described in the register of residents of Dresden, and also in the Hausschatz; but again we may say that he admittedly was prepared to stick to the hoax, albeit one that was not his own invention. Eventually, his then-secretary and second wife, Klara Plöhn, arranged for a diploma, issued by the Universitas German-Americana in Chicago, which turned out to be a ‘degree mill’, a hoax, as well.
But there are other occurrences, and in these, we may not light-heartedly discharge Karl May. After the journey to the Orient and his nervous breakdowns, Karl May declared that his true work should begin only now, and while he wrote symbolist, pacifistic pieces, missing any traits of adventure stories, but providing long religious and philosophical discourses, he published, at that time, a last Winnetou romance, exalting the American Indians, preaching his message of love and understanding, but also of improvement and progress by technological development. There, nevertheless, he wove into this novel the legend of Old Shatterhand, the identification of the scout with the author, and reproached former listeners to his speeches, who had challenged the existence of his famed weapons.
But in his 1910 self-portrait, he wrote that any sharp-witted reader must have seen long ago that all the characters and deeds, all these travels and adventures were meant and depicted as symbols for the long journey to true humane mankind, for the development of the Menschheitsseele, the soul of manhood. His last appearance in Vienna was on this topic, a speech garnished with poems penned by him and with personal recollections, too, which he used to support his arguments for a pacifistic and progressist approach.
To illustrate the conundrum of Karl May, let me refer to two articles and one photograph. In May 1912, in the Austrian social democratic monthly, Der Strom, a cultural journal appearing from April 1911 to August 1914, Stefan Hock (1877, Vienna -1947, London, a private lecturer at the Vienna University until he was removed for racist grounds in 1938 and had to immigrate to Great Britain, from where he never came back), attacked the author (and, may we say, poet) for his lies, his biographical constructions, and his – as he meant it – frauds. He argued on moral grounds and with moral indignation. In the issue of the following month, Berthold Viertel (1885, Vienna - 1953, Vienna, a writer and film and theatre director, in exile from 1933-1947, translator of Tennessee Williams in Vienna) defended Karl May, but less the literature than the man and the pleasure of reading him. And he stresses the poetic integrity of the writer and that on moral grounds, too (citing the foreword of the Winnetou relation, ‘this really beautiful lament of the decline of the Indian race’).
And now let’s have a look at this photograph.
It was shot by Klara May in the year 1906 in May’s orchard, in the days during which he took a symbolist turn. In the foreground, pipe in mouth, Colt in hand, we see a certain Rudolf Kafka. Whereas the other persons are friends of Karl May, Kafka is a protégé of the writer, who lived temporarily in the Villa ‘Shatterhand’. He was a gifted musician and was, from time to time, supported financially by Karl, but much to the annoyance of Klara May. Two things are remarkable about this photo.
One is the disguise of May’s friends. Are they joking about Karl May’s story-telling and identification with his heroes or are they stressing their own belief in the truth of what their friend is still disseminating? Private letters to Karl May from the first years of the new century insinuate that his admirers were willing to see and discover what they wanted to see and discover. The publisher Fehsenfeld (or his wife), having called the author for the first time in his home in 1891, told afterwards that he (or she) had noticed May’s bowlegs, presumably from a long life of riding. The sorry truth, however, is that in a wanted poster, dated 1869, May is described to have crooked legs.
It is questionable whether May’s proper friends were conscious of the huge bulk of lies and fancies that Karl May served up. But the publishers and his admirers believed him, or pretended to believe, often on grounds of publication policies, and let him go on, without restraining or questioning him. Carl Ball, for example, a military musician leading and conducting the brass corps of the Treffenfeld lancers and raving about Herr Doktor, wrote to May, in a letter dated March 1909, that he told his comrades and mates, after a visit to May, that he had seen the scar of a knife wound Winnetou had inflicted on him, in the first novel of the trilogy. ‘On the left side under the throat’, as he recalled.
The second thing to be remarked about the photo is Rudolf Kafka. This leads us to those details in May’s œuvre in which he willingly (but, as I may add, unconsciously) speaks about himself. There are two romances where a musician is supported by the hero, once by Old Shatterhand himself in ‘Satan und Ischariot’, the other time in the Münchmeyer tome ‘Wege zum Glück’ (Paths to Happiness). His acquaintance with the virtuoso violinist dates from 1906, long after the two pieces had been written, but it seemed that Karl May was willing to fulfil the duties of a Maecenas, as he himself was fostered and taught in his boyhood, and as he regarded it as correct and civic.
Equally, the leitmotif of the poor poet appears again and again, for example where the naïve poet, a wunderkind who dwells under miserable circumstances as an adopted orphan in a poor family, in the Münchmeyer novel ‘Der verlorene Sohn’ (The Lost Son), is exploited by his publisher and denied justifiable fees. In the same piece, thefts are mentioned (even of a fob watch) that are not thefts but gifts or loans. Although in the Münchmeyer novels May is not prepared to identify with the superheroes of those romances, they wear traits of their creator’s desires and experiences.
In ‘Der verlorene Sohn’, the hero is a former police detective, charged wrongfully with murder, who comes back in disguise and immensely wealthy and, moreover, as a secret agent. Dr. Karl Sternau, the hero of ‘Waldröschen’ (Little Rose of Forests), has nothing in common with his maker, aside from his Christian name, but he is a physician. Karl May himself is fascinated by medicine and psychology, too, he had wanted to study medicine, a dream of childhood and youth, and also Kara ben Nemsi, that is the author in Arabic disguise in his Oriental novels, poses in one and the other episode of the tome as a physician. Sternau, as Old Shatterhand, is a master of all weapons and is fluent in several languages, which enables him to hunt down the culprits throughout the world. Richard von Königsau, a commissioned lancer officer on a secret mission in the volumes of ‘Die Liebe des Ulanen’ (The Lancer’s Love), is master of French and Arabic, athletic and strong, trained and educated, and saves his father, his love, and others, before finally saving Germany itself (then, 1870, it was still Prussia, but not for long) from the mischief schemed by his archenemy, Alouin Richemonte.
It is only in the Hausschatz pieces that May transferred the marvellous features and characteristics, though invented, onto himself, whereas in former works, he transferred his experiences and his longings onto the characters he created. Old Shatterhand has nothing to do with Karl Sternau, although both are of the same super-hero kind. It is the author who intervenes and makes the difference. Karl May never disguised as the secret agent, as he disguised as Old Shatterhand and Kara ben Nemsi. And that is because his assumption of bogus authority had already been achieved, and this had brought him directly to jail. To slip into the garments of physicians, officers, detectives or high officials was a forbidden fruit already consumed.
The identifications we can find in the early works are rather pathetic. One of the sidekicks of the hero in The Lost Son is a bitterly poor reporter, but he is also a PhD and a former virtuoso violinist, now inhibited by a badly-treated wound in his right hand that keeps him from performing, leaving him as the only honest soul working at the newspaper. Can we see Karl May? Of course, and in any case, more sincere than in his well-travelled romantic personages of Old Shatterhand, Kara ben Nemsi and Charley. But it seems to me that Karl May humbugs only his adult readership. Perhaps in retaliation for the prerequisites of his publishers?
Novels distinctly dedicated to young readers display an Old Shatterhand who is referred to in the third person. No first-person storytelling occurs and Old Shatterhand is one scout, digger, or hunter amongst others, the stories appearing in about the same time, albeit in different papers.
There are astonishing moments of clear-sightedness, too. In the 1910 apologist autobiography, Karl May, speaking of the guide and accompaning friend Haji Halef Omar in the Orient-cycle, declares that ‘I have not the heart to let my haji die, this is beyond my strength. I do love the little guy all too much, him being part of my own life. (…) This haji is my soul reflected, yes, the anima of Karl May! Me describing all the faults of the haji, I depict my own ones and thus make a confession as sincere and thorough as any writer has yet made before’.
It seems clear to me that two braggards are mingled into one and then again divided into two, but what remains is the most likeable small figure of a henpecked husband who never wanted to be such, but adores his wife and master in a loving and confident manner, who holds a title never gained (neither haji nor PhD), who produces a religion sui generis, based on Christian foundations while denying Protestant or Catholic biases and propagated in his respective entourage (the Haddedihn, the tribe of Karl May’s Arab friends, as well as May’s pacifist surroundings). So here Karl May makes no excuses, but does some frank talking.
The believers among the admirers did not die out. There are years biographically scarcely documented between the detentions in the jails. Some fans were (and sometimes still are) interpolating travels to America and the Middle East, where the young man could have experienced foreign cultures and lives, if not gone through the adventures he later described. There is a certain Carl Traugott Urban (1843-1919) who claimed to have travelled and tramped in the company of a wandering type-setter and of Karl May, through Switzerland and southern France, and to have been told by May stories of his sojourn in America. These stories, allegedly passed to his son Gustav (1884-1969), resemble a bit the tales of the Winnetou volumes. And Urban tells that Karl May made for northern Africa, too, but he was not willing to accompany him. To strengthen the tale of May’s early journeys and adventures, a letter, or to say it correctly, a piece of a letter from a certain Fred Sommer or Summer was produced, Summer being an acquaintance of Karl May in America (and the role model for Old Firehand).
Though the Urban – père et fils – relations are refuted and in no way acknowledged, they seem to bustle about. In the year 1979, a book was published bearing the title ‘Karl May. So war sein Leben’ (Karl May. Thus Was his Life), by a certain Albrecht P. Kann. This man was a writing maniac, too, and concerned mainly with dime novels for pulp magazines, using several aliases, as May did. He was famous for his Wyatt Earp stories, which lacked any historical references, and used his aliases in a monstrous way, for example, Peter Altenburg, to insinuate a reference to the noted Viennese author and homme de lettres, Peter Altenberg.
So, we can close the circle. In the beginning, we find a Karl May trying to make his own luck, pursuing his plans devised in childhood, youth and imprisonment, putting up with exploitation, cutting back his dreams, and producing for pulp magazines. Gradually, he emerged from these restraints, but without overcoming his own bondages. Nevertheless, he managed to become a well-esteemed member of bourgeois society, but the prices he paid were high throughout his life.
In the end, when our novelist is long dead and surviving only in our childish dreams, another producer of dime novels shows up to insinuate that Karl May might have been not only the hero we wanted to see, but had – as a hero – really existed. Though the Urban tales are not as heroic as they might be imagined, they fit into the lives of 19th century journeymen and tramps. There remains no testimony that Karl May made it to Southern France and North Africa, not to speak of America. If you want to learn more, look for the respective links in Karl May Wiki, Karl May Verlag and Karl May Gesellschaft (all in German). May himself, in his apologetic ‘Mein Leben und Streben’, promises us a second volume concerning the journeys of his youth. But, alas, he died before, and we are not or never able to see what he wanted us to see.
We are restricted to the dullness of an author of our days who wrote his dime novel fictions about Wyatt Earp and supplies us with a Karl May fiction, too. And the riddle of Karl May is this: When all the scientific scholars and men of letters had led their efforts to the ultimate end to prove that May never had been to America (not to speak of the Wild West) before 1908, why do we crave a most silly account of Old Shatterhand’s early travels to the land of the Apaches?