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Karl May: The German 'cowboy' 29/11/2007 00:00
Karl May and Europe's fascination with the American Wild West go on show in Berlin.
And four years later, the man who would capture the hearts and minds of young and old alike for years to come with his gripping adventure books died in his beloved Saxony in Germany. A fascination Framing an image Playing at cowboys and Indians Copyright DPA with Expatica 29 November 2007 Subject: Germany, cowboys, Indians, native Americans, history, adventure, literature, novels, pop culture, Berlin, exhibitions
For most of the last century and beyond, German writer Karl May's books on the American Wild West have made him a hero in more than 40 different countries. 
Now 95 years after his death, crowds are flocking to see a Berlin exhibition devoted to May, whose adventure stories about cowboys and Apache warriors once seemed so real that generations of youngsters in Europe believed he had spent most of his life living among them.
In reality May, whose action-packed travel fiction about the American Wild West sold more than 200 million copies and were translated into more than 40 languages, had never set foot on American soil at the time he wrote about Apache chief Winnetou and his blood brother, German engineer, Old Shatterhand.
Only once did May ever visit the US -- in 1908 at the age of 66, when he first met a Native American. He never made it west of the Mississippi, though.
As illustrated by the show at Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum until January 6, May possessed a vivid imagination. He also enjoyed guises and dressing up in flamboyant clothes. At one time he was a schoolteacher, then a con man, accused of posing as a policeman.
May's misdemeanors led to his being jailed for seven years. He spent most of his time "inside" dreaming and scribbling down his Wild West ideas on scraps of paper. After his release, Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld, a Freiburg publisher, impressed by May's talent for turning out what was then termed "trashy literature" hired him to write westerns.
May's career was launched. Within a brief span he had risen to become Germany's undisputed best-selling author, living in luxury in his hometown of Radebeul, near Dresden. A member of a poor weaver's family in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), May churned out a flood of books with titles like "Winnetou" "Old Surehand," "The Oil Prince" and "Kara Ben Nemsi." 
His output was prodigious, some 74 volumes in all - many of which are to be seen at the exhibit at the museum in the elegant extension designed by IM Pei.
Johannes Zeilinger, the curator of the Karl May exhibition argues that May framed a popular image of North America with Indians "as a dying race, tragically killed off by fate and by the spread of a new empire."
Hans-Ottomeyer, the Museum's director, largely agrees, claiming May taught Germans in the mid-1880s, "America was a wild place of natives and intruders."
Generations of young Germans grew up reading May's books, says Ottomeyer, who was no exception. Today, this was no longer true due to the "presence" of Harry Potter and other new literary heroes -- a fact causing wistfulness among some of the show's visitors.
"You know, it's not surprising that Karl May remains the most read German author of all time," explained Angelika Standke, 37, a Munich sociologist after a visit to the exhibition. "After all, he greatly influenced the imagination of European audiences by capturing not only the beauty of America but also its tougher, pioneering element and spirit."
Nowadays, there are estimated to be up to 50,000 German adults who spend their free time playing cowboys and Indians. Wild West theme parks are "in" in Europe, with most of them found in Germany. Eldorado, a fake Wild West village, has emerged near Templin, not far from where German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up.
Besides the American Wild West, May also wrote adventure yarns about the Orient and Africa, at one stage even distributing photos of himself geared up as Kara Ben Nemsi, Old Shatterhand's doppelganger in the Ottoman world.
In postwar communist GDR (East Germany), May's books were frowned upon by the regime, and the author's house in Radebeul was closed to visitors. Then in the mid-1980s, the leadership had a change of heart.
Defa Films were suddenly allowed to be made about Winnetou, and May's house reopened to the public. A museum near Dresden was inaugurated in his name, albeit heavily accented on the suffering of Indians in the "capitalist US."
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