In the realm of the silver lion III

In the realm of the silver lion III is a travel story by Karl May . The book was published in autumn 1902 as volume 28 of Karl May's collected travel stories and is part of the tetralogy Im Reiche des Silber Löwen I-II .

The first chapter ( In Basra ) was written in 1898 and is completely in the tradition of adventurous travel novels. The rest of the third volume was written in the first half of 1902 and belongs to May's late work .

In 1912 an illustrated edition was published with pictures by Claus Bergen .

content

In Basra , Kara Ben Nemsi and Hajji Halef Omar surprisingly meet Sir David Lindsay . They decide to travel to Shiraz together but accidentally get separated.

Halef receives - through an error on the part of the messenger - a letter which is intended for the Sill Ghulam el Multasim. He takes the letter and the two leave Basra.

On their way they are ambushed at night and robbed of all their weapons and horses. While chasing the villains, they meet a troop of horsemen who help them get their property back. As a thank you, Kara and Halef, who is slowly becoming ill, are to take part in a campaign against the Jamikun tribe. Both agree.

During the pursuit of an enigmatic fakir it turns out that he is the sheik of the Jamikun and calls himself Pedehr. He informs Kara and Halef that both the robbery and the retrieval of their weapons and horses had been staged to ensure their gratitude and assistance. Kara and Halef then decide to lure their "companions" into an ambush by the Jamikun. He succeeds, but Halef collapses seriously ill. Kara is also seriously ill with typhoid.

Both are brought to the valley of the Jamikun and cared for there by the Shakara. Shakara is a great-granddaughter of Marah Durimeh and was once saved by Kara Ben Nemsi (see Durchs Wilde Kurdistan ). While Kara is gradually recovering, Halef is still fighting for his life. In order to awaken his spirits, Hanneh and Kara Ben Halef are brought in.

Kara Ben Nemsi gets to know Pekala and Tifl. Kara Ben Halef takes the latter for a ride in the area. There they meet Sheik Hafiz Aram and his wife, who are being persecuted by Persian soldiers for murder. They take the two of them to the Jamikun valley. When the pursuers arrive, their leader - a Sill - is captured. He threatens blood revenge.

The murdered man's son, the blood avenger, is Ghulam el Multasim. Ahriman Mirza also comes to the Jamikun and announces their end.

A big race is planned in which the best horses will compete against each other. The competition should decide everything.

Origin and interpretation

The novel Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen III (1902), together with the second volume, Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen IV (1903), is one of the strangest key novels in German literature.

Karl May's marital crisis, the separation from Emma and the connection with Klara , but also the writer's confrontation with himself and his literary adversaries and all the important events of his life in general, especially in the years 1899 to 1903, are reflected - repeatedly coded, poetic condensed and theologically reflected - in the final volumes of the Silver Lion .

The author has expressed himself emphatically in various documents about the Silver Lion III / IV . Adele Einsle z. B. (the mother of a Munich high school student with whom Karl May had exchanged very warm letters since the beginning of 1903) informed him on December 21, 1902: This novel "is extremely interesting because it contains my only answer to my enemies!" And three days later he wrote to Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld :

“Do you notice that a new era has dawned with Volume IV? The hitherto silent 'silver lion' finally, at last, emerges from its cliffs. The threatening 'Rrrrad!' sounds [...] Do you finally notice how Karl May must be read? [...] You will then find that you had something completely different from what you thought you had printed! Our books are meant to last for centuries […] [You] must open both eyes even to blindness. So: MY TIME IS FINALLY HERE! "

On January 21, 1903 he wrote to Willy Einsle:

“What May describes relates to the tangible body world. The sense and the meaning reveal completely different areas. Only blindness that does not see it can become its enemy. Hence his pity and his silence!

Please, my dear young friend, take the third volume of the “Silver Lion” so that I can give you a few hints!

An uphill ride from Basra to the Kurdish mountains. Basra swamp, contagion. On the mountains, purity, recovery. Read carefully and you will find that this ride leads not only from the geographic, but also from the spiritual swamp to recovery. We become better, nobler, higher-thinking people. And everything that is bodily present is also to be considered spiritually. And what the bodies do also takes place precisely in invisible areas. Who are the metaphysical Jamikun, the Massaban ...? Who is the Ustad, the Pedehr, the Mirza, the Blood Avenger, the Tifl, the Pekala ...? Who are all our horses that have to race, and which one must win as a result? What does the Beit-y-Chodeh, the giant masonry, the alabaster tent mean? Relocate all of this to Germany, to our spiritual world! I don't want to tell you any more today.

Perhaps you now suspect how my books should be read, which are by no means "written for boys", as my enemies claim! "

The undoubtedly difficult, always only approximately possible interpretation of this enigmatic, in its main parts heterogeneous and yet "aesthetically significant" work by Karl May requires knowledge of his biographical background and the history of its genesis.

At the end of July 1901 May announced the final volumes of the Silver Lion to the publisher Fehsenfeld . The first chapter of the Silver Lion III , which was completed in 1902, is identical to the manuscript pages written in 1898 which - according to the original plan - were to continue the Hausschatz story Am Turm zu Babel and which May had Pustet send back to him in June 1901 . Only the end (pp. 58–66 of the Fehsenfeld version) was corrected and expanded by the writer in the spring of 1902: the fictional character David Lindsay introduced at the beginning of this first chapter of the book, which May - given his new overall concept - probably no longer needed , had to be adopted. May also changed the earlier manuscript title The Lion of Farsistan : Basra is now the title of the introductory book chapter.

The reason why May was still using this older text at all can only be guessed at: On the one hand, the author did not want to completely disregard the reader's expectations and the publisher's insistence on an exciting story; and on the other hand he wanted to prove the continuity of his literary work before and after the trip to the Orient. This is how it can be explained that May presented his new work as a continuation of the Silver Lion and not - as in Pax / Friede - created a completely new fable that dispenses with all elements of the adventure.

May has ostensibly and not always consistently continued the still predominantly adventurous plot of the Silberlöwen I / II in the sequels. The rather easy and cheerful introductory chapter of the Silver Lion III should not scare off the previous community of readers from the start.

The description of the location in the first chapter was conducive to the overall concept of the final volumes: “Every reader of 'A Thousand and One Nights' is familiar with the name Basra ” (III, 1); At the time of the narration, of course, the fairytale location “only offers the visitor's eyes the signs of decay; he stands on boggy ground, which creates dangerous miasms ”(III, 3). In Basra, as it later turns out, the first-person narrator Kara Ben Nemsi and the alter ego Hajji Halef were infected with toxins. In the course of the further events you get typhoid . The central motif of the serious illness, the state of being “at death”, as early as The Death Caravan (1882) and then again in Jenseits and Pax , is prepared in the Basra chapter. In this respect, the assumption of this role in Silberlöwen III can be seen as plausible and coherent.

The "actual work", however, which has almost nothing to do with the style of the Silver Lion I / II , begins only now: with the second chapter of the Silver Lion III , already rich in references in the title Ueber die Grenz (p. 67 ff.).

In April 1902, Fehsenfeld's printer Felix Krais received the first part of the new manuscript, which Karl May had begun to write on the night of February 9th. Under the title Am Tode. According to Karl May's travel story , this section was preprinted from mid-February to the end of April 1902 in the Koblenzer Rhein- und Moselboten - a Catholic newspaper - by Johann Dederle, May's former editor at Tremonia in Dortmund . The journal text corresponded to the second chapter On the Frontier and part of the third chapter At Death in the future book version of the Silver Lion III (pp. 67-266).

The new part opens with a surprising, existentially significant and theologically very subtle dialogue about dying (III, 67 ff.). Incidentally, this part of the novel appears superficially like a travel story in the earlier style. Only - the heroes are no longer the old ones! Kara Ben Nemsi and Halef, whose mental resilience is already weakened by the looming illness, make major mistakes and considerable carelessness. They allow themselves to be robbed of their horses, weapons and part of their clothes by the ruse of a nomad group. They pursue the perpetrators on foot and inadequately dressed. On the way they meet Nafar Ben Shuri, who pretends to be the sheik of the Dinarun Kurds, but is actually the leader of the robbers. Nafar feigns friendliness to help Kara and Halef recover their property. His ulterior motive: he apparently wants to make the heroes his allies in order to learn the "secrets" of their horses and weapons. The path with the “Dinarun” leads the two heroes, who have been warned before Nafar by the mysterious “Pedehr” disguised as a fakir, into the “Valley of the Sack”. Only the daring leap over the abyss can free them from the “dead end” and bring them to the “promised land”, the valley of the Jamikun.

Compared to the Pax story (1901), Am Tode initially seems like a step backwards in that some adventure motifs from the repertoire of May's earlier works reappear. But seen as a work of art, Am Tode is at least equal to the Pax novel. Because the upper-class fable encodes the current situation of Karl May in often ambiguous formulations, for example his sometimes embarrassing feud with the Cologne publishing house Bachem and with Hermann Cardauns .

The whole part of the novel is to be understood symbolically. “Riding” forms the central point - according to Ulrich Schmid, a metaphor for May's literary activity: “From this fundamental component, a wealth of equations develops, right down to the details, through which the apparent 'robber story' is superimposed and ultimately structured . "

The narrative contains numerous, cleverly coded allusions to the author's life: among other things, his religious struggles, his literary career, his colportage novels, his creative crises, his readership, his opponents, his various publishers and how they dealt with his works. But the exact decoding of the plot details and the novel's staff is by no means easy. All too simple identifications (such as “Pedehr is Fehsenfeld”) would be a mistake. Because the characters of the protagonists are “related to several levels of meaning” and composed “of different segments of reality from real people” from the author's environment. "This change of the reference level makes an interpretation difficult, especially since the function and thus also their identification of individual figures change with the progress of the action."

After Ulrich Schmid, Am Tode is Karl May's first story that clearly shows a symbolic representation. One objection to this view would be that we find interesting encodings, including changing autobiographical functions of the novel's staff, in the Beyond Volume, but also in the Silver Lion I / II and in all of May's earlier travel stories. Only: May has not yet written so consciously, so densely and so consistently allegorically as in Silberlöwen III in his earlier narrative.

Simultaneously with the advance copy of the novel part at the death in the Rhine and Moselle messenger was preparing May the book version of the Silver Lion III before for Fehsenfeld. By the beginning of July 1902, the rest of the third book chapter, Am Tode, which continued the journal text, and the fourth chapter, A Blood Avenger, had been completed. A little later the final chapter Ahriman Mirza was completed. In August 1902 the Silberlöwe III could appear as volume XXVIII of the Freiburg series.

“At that time, May's physical and mental state corresponded completely to the state described by the title word Am Tode!” The public controversy over his person and the breakup of his marriage condensed into a private dilemma that made the writer sick and confronted him with death had to. But the poet is by no means resigned: He looks up to the mountains from which “help comes” (III, 262; cf. Psalm 121: 1). The texts of the Silver Lion III provide information on how May had imagined rescue in the waking dream!

In “Leap over the Past” - a beautiful, extremely dramatic scene written in rhythmic language (III, 257 f.) - Kara Ben Nemsi and Halef reach the highlands of the Jamikun, a Kurdish tribe that lives as if in paradise and whose members have nothing than just love to know God and man. After jumping over the yawning crevice, the terminally ill heroes collapse. You can't help yourself anymore. But the help comes in the form of the Ustad , the “master”, the spiritual head of the Jamikun. The Ustad, a venerable old man who is exalted above everything low, holds roses in his hand. Also the Pedehr, the "father", the worldly head of the Jamikun, wears only purple- blooming Shiras roses in his belt instead of weapons . Even the Jamikun cows and goats are decorated with bouquets of flowers.

The healing seems to come through the flowers. “Could man be like the flower!” (III, 529) The Ustad, the Pedehr, but especially the young and pretty Schakara are “like the flower”: so good, so beautiful and so pure. The help for Kara Ben Nemsi comes, above all, in the form of Shakara, a happy, natural, very musical and deeply religious Kurdish girl who is utterly “soul”. The recovery of Kara and Halef takes place like the healing of Waller in Pax or in peace in deep sleep, which brings the forces of the subconscious to effect. Shakara guards and guards the sleep of the Effendi. Roses and violets , the scent of these flowers and delicate music, symbols of harmony, feminine love, lost and found poetry, promote the healing of the hero.

The literary treatment of the subject near death experience in this chapter is also impressive . Karl May describes how Hajji Halef Omar comes very close to death through his serious illness and how he finds his way back to life through his love for his wife and son as well as through his preference for horses and their races.

What really helps, what ultimately saves, in the Silver Lion and in other parts of May's later works, is above all religion. The pious prayer of Shakara (there is much prayer, praise and thanks in the final volumes of the Silver Lion ) lifts the hearts of Kara Ben Nemsi and all residents of the Jamikun camp to God, their origin and their goal.

The Silver Lion III conjures up mildness, infinite goodness, and peace with God and creation. But comparable to the finale of the Peace novel (1904), the third volume of the Silver Lion does not end with the arrival of eternal peace, but with the appearance of the evil one, Ahriman Mirza, whose "strange demonic lights sparkled speech [...] to Dostoyevsky Grand Inquisitor remembers. ”Ahriman,“ who presses between spirit and soul in order to destroy both where possible ”(III, 635), announces to the Jamikun their doom.

After completing his work on the Silver Lion III , May began that memorable journey on July 21, 1902, which ultimately led to the irrevocable separation from Emma and the writer's permanent bond with Klara. This trip and the subsequent turbulence forced a four-month long break in work on the Silver Lion .

Anonymous denunciation and short trial in Rome

At the end of March 1910, a five-page, anonymous indictment written on March 20 reached the Index Congregation in Rome. The six works considered offensive by the unknown German informer were the volumes Im Reich des silbernen Löwen III (1902) and IV (1903), Am Jenseits (1899), Und Friede auf Erden! (1904) and Ardistan and Dschinnistan I and II (1909). The accusations were of dogma-free Christianity, criticism of all denominations, including the Catholic, general religion, religious indifference, spiritualism , monism and pantheism . The secretary of the responsible congregation, the German Dominican Thomas Esser, put on record briefly on May 20, 1910:

“A certain anonymous German reports the works of the suspected author Karl May to this Holy Congregation. Because this is a non-Catholic author, about whose life and works various newspapers spread different rumors and views, the matter was decided: Because of the There is nothing to be done in the current situation. "

References and comments

1. ↑ General information on text and text history at http://karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Im_Reiche_des_silbernen_Löwen
2. ↑ The following statements essentially follow the great Karl May biography of Hermann Wohlgschaft: Große Karl May Biographie. Leben und Werk , Paderborn: Igel Verlag 1994, p. 435 ff.
3. ^ Euchar Albrecht Schmid : Shape and Idea . In: Karl May's Collected Works , Vol. 34: I . Bamberg 36th ed. 1976, pp. 353-408 (p. 399).
4. ↑ Quoted from Karl and Klara May: Correspondence with Adele and Willy Einsle . In: Jb-KMG 1991, pp. 11-96 (p. 15) online version
5. ^ From May's letter of December 24, 1902 to Fehsenfeld; quoted after Konrad Guenther: Karl May and his publisher . In: Karl May: Satan and I Iscariot . Freiburg first editions, vol. XX. Edited by Roland Schmid. Bamberg 1983, A 2-35 (20 f.).
6. ^ To Willy Einsle, Munich, January 21, 1903 . In: Christoph F. Lorenz (ed.): Between heaven and hell. Karl May und die Religion , Karl-May-Verlag Bamberg / Radebeul, second, revised and expanded edition 2013, p. 477.
7. ↑ Martin Lowsky: Karl May. Stuttgart 1987, p. 116.
8. ^ Ulrich Schmid: The work of Karl May 1895-1905. Narrative structures and editorial findings . Materials for Karl May Research, Vol. 12. Ubstadt 1989, p. 211. Online version
9. ↑ Ibid., P. 211.
10. ↑ Hans Wollschläger: First approach to the "Silver Lion". On the symbolism and creation . In: Jb-KMG 1979, pp. 99-136 (p. 125)
11. ↑ In the kingdom of the silver lion , Volume 3, Freiburg i.Br. 1908, p. 270 ff. (Online at zeno.org)
12. ↑ Joachim Kalka: (work article on) In the kingdom of the silver lion Ill / IV . In: Karl May Handbook . Edited by Gert Ueding in collaboration with Reinhard Tschapke. Stuttgart 1987, pp. 288-301 (p. 291)
13. ↑ Quoted from Hubert Wolf : Karl May and the Inquisition , in: Christoph F. Lorenz (Ed.): Between heaven and hell. Karl May und die Religion , Karl-May-Verlag Bamberg / Radebeul, second, revised and expanded edition 2013, pp. 71–143, here p. 115 f.

literature

• Otto Eicke : Der Bruch im Bau , in: Karl-May-Jahrbuch 1930 (online version) , pp. 77–126.
• Arno Schmidt : Abu Kital. From the new grand mystic. In: Dya Na Sore. Conversations in a library. Karlsruhe 1958, pp. 150-193; today in: Arno Schmidt: Dialoge 2 (Bargfeld edition, group of works II / 2). Zurich 1990, pp. 31-59.
• Hans Wollschläger : The "High House". Karl May and the realm of the Silver Lion. In: Jb- KMG 1970, pp. 118-133. Online version
• Hans Wollschläger: First approach to the "Silver Lion". On the symbolism and creation . In: Jb-KMG 1979, pp. 99-136. Online version
• Volker Krischel: Karl May's "shadow novel". Viewpoints on a "world interpretation poetry". So-KMG 37 (1982) online version
• Christoph F. Lorenz: "That is the El Dscharanil tree". Parables, fairy tales and dreams in Karl May's “In the kingdom of the silver lion III and IV”. In: Jb-KMG 1984, pp. 139–166. Online version
• Joachim Kalka: (Work article on) In the kingdom of the silver lion III / IV . In: Karl May Handbook . Edited by Gert Ueding in collaboration with Reinhard Tschapke. Stuttgart 1987, pp. 288-301; 2nd expanded and revised edition Würzburg 2001, pp. 236–240.
• Hermann Wohlgschaft: "What I saw there has never been seen". On the theology of the "Silver Lion III / IV". In: Jb-KMG 1990, pp. 213-264. Online version
• Hermann Wohlgschaft: Große Karl May biography. Leben und Werk , Paderborn: Igel Verlag 1994, p. 435 ff. ISBN 3-927104-61-2 online version
• Dieter Sudhoff / Hartmut Vollmer (eds.): Karl Mays "In the realm of the silver lion" (Karl May Studies, Vol. 2), Paderborn: Igel Verlag 1997, 2nd edition Hamburg 2010 (with detailed bibliography). ISBN 3868155058
  • Adolf Droop: Karl May. An analysis of his travel stories
  • Arno Schmidt : From the new grand mystic
  • Hans Wollschläger : First approach to the 'Silver Lion'. On the symbolism and creation
  • Walther Ilmer: Unsuccessful trip to Persia. Thoughts on the 'great upheaval' in Karl May's work
  • Ulrich Melk: From the classic travel novel to the mythical-allegorical late work. Continuity and change of narrative structures in Karl May's 'Silberlöwen' tetralogy
  • Wolfram Ellwanger: encounter with the symbol. Thoughts on Karl Mays 'In the Realm of the Silver Lion IV'
  • Ulrich Schmid: The hidden writing. Karl May's variants of the 'Silver Lion III / IV'
  • Jürgen Hahn: Language as content. On the phenomenology of the 'alabaster style' in Karl May's novel 'Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen'. A blueprint
  • Volker Krischel: “We don't want to be masters of your faith, but helpers for your joy”. Comments on Karl May's criticism of religion in 'Silberlöwen III / IV'
  • Christoph F. Lorenz: "That is the El Dscharanil tree". Parables, fairy tales and dreams in Karl Mays 'In the kingdom of the silver lion III and IV'
  • Dieter Sudhoff : Karl May's great dream. Another approach to the 'Silver Lion'
  • Hansotto Hatzig: The women in the realm of the silver lion. Reading notes and impressions
  • Franz Hofmann: Fall into Hell and Transfiguration. The conclusion of the action in the 'Silver Lion' as a paradigm for Karl May's old works
• Peter Hofmann : Karl May and his gospel. Theological attempt on camouflage and hermeneutics , Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2016, esp.p. 120, 123, 166.
• Hans Wollschläger: Approaching the Silver Lion. Readings on Karl May's late work , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1970-7 .

Web links

Commons : In the Realm of the Silver Lion III  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Full text on the Karl May Society website
• In the realm of the silver lion III at Zeno.org .
• Entry in the external Karl May Wiki