That’s how queer, traumatized and learning disabled Karl May’s Wild West was
Nerds: Sam Hawkens and Lord Castlepool
Those: pa / Keystone
Everyone talks about the Indians in Karl May’s novels. Much more interesting, however, are the Germans with whom the imaginative Saxon populated the prairie. Conservatives in particular, who are now defending May, should take a close look at them again. Some things could upset her.
VA few years ago I heard from a young woman who had just seen the first part of Indiana Jones: “I have problems with the image of women in the film.” That makes perfect sense. Still, I couldn’t resist replying: “I have even more problems with the image of Germans in ‘Indiana Jones'”. The anecdote seems a bit like a prequel to the “Winnetou” shitstorm that broke out this week. Now many talk about the image of the Indians in Karl May, but nobody about the much more interesting image of the Germans in his work.
The extent to which May’s image of the Indians is shaped by “racism” and “colonialism” is discussed. This may be disconcerting to debate watchers, who previously thought “colonialism” could only happen in a colony (which the US hadn’t been for 100 years by the time the novels were set) and “racism” meant treating people as inferior because of their ethnicity (which one certainly cannot accuse May of, who describes the Indians as extremely good people).
“These people with a migration background who get upset on behalf of Indians even though they aren’t”
A retraction by Ravensburger Verlag on a Winnetou children’s book sparked discussions. “These are people who have actually integrated themselves very well into German philistinism by getting upset and snitching,” says Matthias Heine, WELT editor for the features section.
It is well known that May spent more time in German prisons than in America. The Germans and other whites like the Briton Lord Castlepool, with whom he populated the prairie, seem much more alive than his clichéd Indian characters. They are often highly interesting eccentrics – like the Saxon himself was one. Kleki-Petra, who lives as a teacher with the Apaches, is a veteran of the failed revolution of 1848 and is now trying to achieve freedom and equality in the West. Hobble Frank (aka Heliogabalus Morpheus Edward Franke, born in Moritzburg, Saxony) has a learning disability. Sam Hawkens (who, however, is only in some texts a German named Samuel Falke) distinguishes himself by his weird clothes and his obsessive “If I’m not wrong. Hi, hi, hi” as traumatized and wearing a wig (because he was scalped by Pawnees). Even more genderqueer is Aunt Droll (aka Johannes Melchior Pampel), the Westman in women’s clothes with the falsetto voice.
“Gaming” of Germany by Winnetou?
But even Old Shatterhand and Winnetou, the “red gentleman”, are not as boring as they seem at first glance. The Kindler literature lexicon knows: “In Old Shatterhand the author created a desired ego which, compared to his own humiliated past, characterized by material hardship and criminal attempts to break out, has all the traits of a daydream-like substitute construction.” And also Winnetou, to whom the lexicon a ” “Stiffly pathetic traits from the start” has a secret. Arno Schmidt interprets the chief in terms of depth psychology as an image of May’s homoerotic wishful thinking.
The Kindler writes: “The subliminal homoeroticism of the relationship between Old Shatterhand and Winnetou as well as the sexual symbolism of the scenes and landscapes – Arno Schmidt discovered bare bottoms everywhere – are possibly related to the effect of the novel on the mostly young reader.” If the left May criticism has calmed down again, right-wingers should perhaps debate to what extent the author they are defending contributed to the alleged “gayness” of Germany.