Karl May

[Vaska Tumir]

Rodney Perkins adds: 
>If memory serves me, Karl May was quite popular amongst German youth.
>Hitler allegedly found much of value in his  books. I once read a book on
>Spaghetti Westerns (!) that had an extensive piece on May and his themes.
>If I can remember the title, I will post it.

I read what in retrospect seems like volumes and volumes of May's stuff [in
translation, of course] as a 10-year-old.  Thought it American by
provenance, as do most Americans who'd read the same many more decades ago.
Didn't seem a bit scary at the time -- which just goes to show what a nice
bit of action-packed schmaltzy adventure story stuff can do when placed in
the hands of the young.  But, then, perhaps I was saved by all the Mark
Twaine my family shoved into my print-hungry hands at the same time, who
knows....  Good old Samuel Clemmens: for those of you who were never told,
it was Twaine's trenchant journalism [not Conrad's novella] that really
stirred up things around those late 19th-century Belgian atrocities in the
Congo.  

Vaska










>
>>Jochen sez:
>>>
>>> The concept of _Blutsbr¸derschaft_ (not Blutbr¸derschaft) was popularized
>>> by the late-19th-century german author KARL MAY. In his books, he often
>>> displays Cooper-Pathfinder-like guys having special (one could argue today:
>>> pseudo-homosexual) bonds with american-indian heroes which are made public
>>> by a ceremony involving the exchange of blood. Pretty scary. So while this
>>> idea and practice is quite german in its roots, the average german nowadays
>>> would, if asked, think of it as Wild West and purely american.