The lady on NPR mentioned that Hitler liked this guys books about Native Americans, AKA “Red Indians”. They even made them a “noble, isolated race” so Germans could read the books.
Anyway, checkout this guy’s canoe:
The Paradox Press book The Big Book of Weirdos mentioned that Hitler liked Karl May books, and recommended them to his commanders. It represented the commanders as scornfully dismissing May’s “books for children”. Doubtless this info was gathered from one of the Hitler bios given in their references.
Karl May was really popular in Germany in the late 19th-early 20th century. He’s still kind of popular today.
Many Germans are near-obsessed with the “old west,” and “red indians” in particular.
One of the banes of existance of our sister National Historic Sites nearby are the many Mitteleuropeans who have strongly formed notions of what First Nations peoples dressed and acted like in the “old days.” A lot of time and effort is expended fighting igorance about urban legends regarding beaver pelts and musket barrel lengths, etc.
One interpreter (no longer on this earth, alas), told stories of being often commanded to “dance!” by German tourists, often accompanied by the “woo-woo” hand-over-mouth thing that we all used to do as kids. To be fair, they just don’t know any better.
Milton did get his own back, in his own quiet way, though. The Hudson’s Bay Co trading fort he worked at was restored to circa 1858, so he didn’t wear a wristwatch. He used to offer to show visitors that were being somewhat obnoxious how the First Nations used the sun to tell time. He would take off his big, black felt hat, hold it up and shade his eyes while he looked into the sky, silently peering into the clouds. The crowd would grow silent, watching his every move. He would let out a long, drawn-out breath, and announce that the Great Spirit told him it was about “twenty minutes after two o’clock” (or whatever). Astonished, the crowd would applaud, and marvel at his innate connection with the cosmos.
No-one ever twigged he had a digital watch sewn inside the crown of his “Billy Jack” hat.
The canoe has a Magen David on it. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?
;j
Some Karl May Trivia:
*He was born blind but regained his sight at 4 due to an operation
*He was a compulsive liar who sometimes claimed his books on the Old West were autobiographical
*He came to America once- he was 66 years old and got as far west as Albany, NY
*His museum (his house during his lifetime) is still a very popular tourist attraction
I have some postcards in very poor condition from the Karl May Museum ca. 1930. They’re hysterical: the men couldn’t be any more obviously German if they were in lederhosen (big, burly, redfaced, blonde, Hindenberg moustaches) but they were dressed as gunfighters with an Italian looking fellow dressed as an Indian.
Say, is one of the indians in that canoe really Mel Brooks in makeup?
Maybe he’s related to Espera Oscar DeCorti.
I’ll say. I recently visited one of the most surreal places I have ever seen; “John Wayne Island,” a Wild West village built by an Austrian on a small sand island surrounded by mangrove swamps in Panama. It’s utterly bizarre. They have a museum there with all the exhibits in English and German.
Some scenes from the island:
Another big thing for the Germans is the American Civil War. They can’t get enough of it. Lots of German reenactment societies and historical clubs are based on it.
Well, to be fair, we do have “Bavarian Villages” here in the US for some unknown probably godforsaken reason. I always wondered if they had American villages over in Bavaria, now I know.
The Germans aren’t the only Europeans with some odd ideas about American Indians. The most obvious example is an “Indian Village” Duplo set I saw when flodjunior was small, which appears to have been retired. The set included a teepee, a “birch-bark” canoe, a totem pole, and a Saguaro cactus. :smack:
(For those of you scratching your heads: these four items come from four very different areas of North America and would never have been seen in a single Indian village.)
Karl May also wrote a lot of books about his supposed adventures in Arabia (he never actually visited Arabia until late in his life). My favorite parts of these books were always the great names he gave his characters, like “Old Surehand”, “Old Shatterhand”, “Winnetou” and the unforgettable “Hadschi Alef Omar ibn Hadschi Abu Abbas ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gosarah” (I just call him Al ).
May had some difficulties in his early life. After losing his teaching license due to a conviction for theft, he was sent to prison for fraud (he impersonated an M.D. among other things), and actually started to write in prison.
He has been called the German Louis L’Amour, and his books are actually great escapist fun. I personally prefer his Arabian books to his American West books.
I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but during WWII, German fighter pilots would indentify enemy planes as “Indianer!”, e.g. “Indians!” The same way Allied pilots would call out “bandits!” or “bogeys!”
I guess the Germans just love them some cowboys and Indians stories.
Have you ever been to Helen, Georgia (warning: will play an annoying MIDI polka)? You have to love a place where you can find a restaurant called Mee-maw’s Fried Chicken in a [vaguely] Alpine strip mall, or where the Swiss-miss dressed hostess in an Oktoberfest restaurant says goodbye with “Y’all come back!” (Such a pity Flannery O’Connor couldn’t live to see it.)
This just sounds terrifying to me.