German Studies Professor Emeritus Peter Karl Pabisch delivers the next lecture in support of the History Museum exhibit Tall Tales of the Wild West: The Stories of Karl May. “Karl May in America—Enthusiasm or Disappointment?” will be at 6 pm on Friday, April 12, in the History Museum Auditorium. The event is free; museum admission is free on Fridays, 5-8 pm.
May became a beloved author in his native Germany and across Europe for his fictional depictions of an American West he never visited. (Though he did get as far as Buffalo, NY.) His two most famous characters, the Indian “Winnetou” and the trusty “Old Shatterhand” fueled dozens of books and movies, plus annual Karl May festivals that still enjoy popularity in Germany.
Pabisch's talk sheds some light on Karl May with respect to era he lived in. During his years, the strongest immigration to the United States took place from Europe, especially from Germany and Austria-Hungary (together almost one third of all European immigrants between 1850 to 1920). Europeans who had relatively good communication with Americans thought, mostly wrongly, that they could pass judgment on life in the USA. Particularly prominent was the era of the Civil War, which coincided with Napoleon III getting ahold of Mexico and sending his nephew, the Austrian Arch Duke and assumed Emperor of Mexico Ferdinand Maximilian, to assume an illegal throne in Mexico City. The era also coincides with the French-Prussian War and the establishment of the second German Reich under the chancellorship of Otto von Bismarck (1870/71).
At the same time, the Europeans showed great interest in Native American life. Karl May drew his own conclusions from all this and wrote about most of these affairs in his novels.
"His legacy survived him into our days, and it's all the more disappointing that hardly anyone in America knows of him," Pabisch said. "I hope to contribute to the understanding of this author's importance to a span of universal literary culture."
Pabisch's lecture is part of the programming series for the original exhibit Tall Tales of the Wild West: The Stories of Karl May, through Feb. 9, 2014. Curated by Tomas Jaehn, librarian of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library (and another product of Germany), the exhibition includes first-edition and foreign-language versions of May’s books, along with photographs illustrating his life. On loan from the Karl May Museum is Silberbüchse, Winnetou’s name for his rifle. May (rhymes with “my”) said he took the weapon from the Indian’s grave in Wyoming for safekeeping. In fact, the rifle was manufactured in Radebeul as a nonworking prop. Its visit to the exhibition will mark the first time it has been seen in the land where it was purportedly made.
A 10-minute excerpt from the Hollywood-like production Winnetou accompanies the exhibit in the museum’s Auditorium, and it shows how a French actor portrayed a Native America and how Croatia (part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia) played New Mexico. (American actor – and occasional Tarzan – Lex Barker played Old Shatterhand.)
The exhibit and lecture series are generously supported by the Herzstein Foundation, the German Consulate General in Houston, and a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council.
The final lecture will be at 6 pm on Friday, June 14, when Michael Wala, professor of North American history at the University of Bochum in Germany, speaks on “Karl May’s Winnetous: Imagining the Noble Savage in 19th- and 20th-Century Germany.”
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