Germans are enchanted with Native North America

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Ed's note - It's difficult to describe how Aboriginal people have been perceived and understood throughout the world. One of the most enduring images is that of the "noble savage," a stereotype that many Native North Americans have fought long and hard to tear down. But for good or ill, this perception has lingered for over 100 years, contributed to greatly by a German author who never set foot on North America soil or met the Aboriginal people living there.

Of all the mythic images created in America, vicious gangsters, ruthless Wall Street traders, sultry Hollywood sirens, investigative journalists, it is the legend of the American West that has captivated imaginations around the world.

Thanks largely to an author who is almost unknown in English-speaking countries, Germans in particular have long thrilled to tales of cowboys and Indians. So say hello to Karl May, a hugely popular turn-of-the-century adventure writer, and the man who brought the Wild West to central Europe.

May (pronounced "my") wrote more than 60 books, but his most successful and beloved feature was Old Shatterhand, a German immigrant trapper and his blood-brother Winnetou, noblest of all the Indian warriors. Initially aimed at a juvenile market, May's stories began appearing in the late 1870s. But he was quickly adopted by a wider reading public and became more famous throughout Europe than any other writer on the subject, including American authors.

Today, few Germans over the age of 20 have not read at least one of May's books or seen the films based on his Western tales, and many will confess to having wept when they learned of Winnetou's death at the close of the Shatterhand trilogy.

"May wrote about the strong, silent man of the western plains and the Rocky Mountains," said Walther Ilmer, a research consultant to the executive of the Karl-May-Gesellschaft, a literary society. "May's stories are modern mythologies; the good man encounters evil men with whom he must struggle, good always prevailing in the end. His hero is a knight errant on a crusade against crime and wickedness."

Throughout his life, May was closely identified with his first-person narrator and alter ego, Old Shatterhand - so called because he could kill a man with the blow of his fist. Ironically, May never set foot upon the American plains and largely researched his subject in German prison libraries while serving time for, among other things, fraud and impersonating a police officer.

Despite, or perhaps because of this, May's stories continue to be immensely popular. His works have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, far more than any other single German author, including Goethe, Hesse and Mann, and his fans have included the likes of Einstein, Schweitzer, and even Hitler.

Not that he got everything right.

"May's stories, while dramatic, are also full of historical inaccuracies and improbabilities," said Ilmer. "He wrote scenes based on events in the early 1800s, but placed them in the 1860s and '70s. This is one reason May never became popular in the United States. His plots never rang true to the American ear.

According to Ilmer, May was, however, a voracious reader. Ilmer believes May's portrayal of the American Indian was quite accurate.

"He revealed their noble character, their gifts as orators, their wildness, their savage and their heroic traits. May created the legend of Winnetou and in so doing raised sympathy and respect for the American Indians and their way of life. The image the German population has had of the American West and particularly of the American Indian since 1880 has been largely shaped by Karl May."

May's influence is still strong. He now receives more serious academic attention than ever, his works are classic texts at many German universities, and the Karl-May-Gesellsehaft is one of the largest literary societies in the world. Open air festivals of May's work are held every year, attracting thousands.

While May geatly shaped German perceptions of Western life, fascination with America was strongly entrenched even before. Works by early German travel writers, such as Karl Anton Postl, Friedrich Gerstacker, and Balduin Mollhausen, were avidly read. Also popular in translation were writers such as Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper. When Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show visited Munich in 1898 and 1913, huge crowds thronged the Theresienwiese to witness the spectacle.

But then America has always gripped the imagination of Europeans: a land of seemingly limitless space and freedom stretching without borders between two seas. In massive numbers, Germans emigrated to America in search of a better life as early as the 17th century. One major wave of German immigrants came between 1749 and 1754, when 90,000 Germans came to America. A second, much larger influx occurred from 1830 to 1850. More than seven million Germans left their land, some going to Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, but most heading for America. Even today, ethnic Germans are the largest single minority group in the United States.

But why are the Germans who stayed behind so entranced with the American West? In an address in San Francisco during American Indian Heritage Month four years ago, Dr. Eckehard Koch, of the Karl-May-Gesellschaft noted, "In Germany, thinking of foreign countries has always initiated longing for faraway regions, but no foreign country [has caused this] in such a manner as the American far west. Hardly any other nation on earth will be found to display the same vast sympathy towards the Indians as the Germans. Nowhere will you find as many cowboy and Indian clubs as in Germany. There are reasons for this: the myth of the 'noble savage,' the discontent with civilization and the restricted freedom caused by the modern world, and the wish to escape from the narrowness of German life."

From 1963 to 1968, six films were made about the adventures of Karl May's fictional Apache warrior, Winetou. The films, including Winnetou, Winnetou and Shatterhand in the Valley of Death, and Winnetou and his Friend Old Firehand, were only loosely based on May's stories, but they introduced him to a whole new generation of European fans.

Whatever the reason, the lure of the land beyond the Appalachians still exercises a strong hold on Germans, who are traveling to America in increasing numbers, many with the express purpose of experiencing life in the West. According to the American Consulate, the number of Germans visiting America has risen from 373,000 in 1985 to 1.7 million in 1994 and is predicted to increase by 5 to 10 per cent annually.

Travel agent Bernd Walbert of American Ranch Holidays sends more than 300 clients annually to dude ranches in America, where the cost of a weekend of cowboy life can be between $250 to $500. A week on the trail driving cattle can cost the German city slickers as much as $1,700. Walbert said many of his clients are at least in part inspired for their western visit by May's books, the film adaptation of Winnetou, and of course, Hollywood.

"What is surprising is that almost 90 per cent of clients visiting dude ranches are young, single women," notes Walbert.

German tourism to Canada has almost doubled within the last decade to 397,000 visitors a year. While dude ranches are an attraction, some Indian villages, such as the Piapot Reserve near Regina, recreate traditional villages where the tourists can experience Indian culture. Visitors dress in buckskins and feathers, live in tipis, skin muskrats, and join powwows. Many have been studying and practising for years in the cowboy and Indian clubs in Germany to have this "authentic" experience.

A somewhat more incongruous example of Germany's Wild West fascination is the more than 200 cowboy and Indian clubs throughout the country, attracting some 80,000 "cowboys and Indians." This year's annual council, a three-day powwow held near Frankfurt, attracted more than 5,000 peoplewho recreated an encampment of tipis and tents. In Munich, "Western fever" is particularly strong. The Munich Cowboy Club was founded in 1913 (a year after May's death) by a group of would-be immigrants to America. Frustrated by the outbreak of the First World War, the group used its savings to create a slice of frontier life in Bavaria. The club, located on the banks of the Isar near the Munich zoo, is hidden from view behind a lush, green curtain of trees and bushes. Inside, the 80 members undertake typical western activities: ride quarter horses, learn to shoot a bow and arrow, cook around a campfire, or drink in the large clubhouse decorated as a western saloon.

At the cowboy club and other German Wild West clubs, the emphasis is on authenticity. Members spend much time and resources researching the West and Indian life, and disassociate themselves from what they see as May's naivete.

"We refuse to be identified with the romanticism of Karl May," said Peter Timmermann, historian and curator at the Munich Cowboy Club. "We're not against Karl May as a writer, but as an ethnologist. May depicted the Indians as all feathers and warpaint. As a result, Europeans received a very distorted image of Indians." Cowboy club members also believe May performed a disservice to the Indians through his cartoonish characterization of them as noble savages.

A trading post, complete with period wares, is one of the buildings in the compound, while the club's collection of authentic Western artifacts, valued at $600,000, is among the most impressive in Europe. Among the prize exhibits is a rare autographed photograph of Buffalo Bill, a full Sioux ceremonial dress, and authentic weapons, including a small canon. "We don't play cowboys and Indians," said Timmermann. "We do this properly. Of course it is a hobby, but we really try to take it seriously."

The Munich Cowboy Club will hold its annual event-filled open weekend on Sept. 14 and15, tel. (089) 723 51 46. The Karl May Museu