Karl May Society
| Karl May Society (KMG) |
|
|---|---|
| purpose | Scientific review of the life and work of the writer Karl May |
| Chair: | Florian Schleburg (since 2019) |
| Establishment date: | 1969 |
| Number of members: | approx. 1,700 |
| Seat : | Radebeul |
| Website: | http://www.karl-may-gesellschaft.de/ |
The Karl May Society (KMG) was founded in 1969 and deals with the life and work of the writer Karl May . She is the editor of the year books of the Karl May Society (JbKMG), which have been published since 1970, the quarterly notebooks Mitteilungen der Karl May Society (M-KMG) and KMG-Nachrichten as well as special issues, material volumes and reprints of May's works. It has around 1,700 members; the current chairman is Florian Schleburg , his deputies Hartmut Vollmer and Joachim Biermann . It holds a congress every two years, most recently in 2011 in Wolfenbüttel, 2013 in Radebeul, 2015 in Bamberg , 2017 in Bad Kösen and 2019 in Mainz .
There is a lot of information about May on the website; many of the publications are available as scans, May texts as digital reprints. There are extensive catalogs for secondary literature and the most extensive link directory. Since June 2007, members of the society have been continuing the historical-critical edition of Karl May's works in collaboration with the Karl May Verlag (Bamberg) and the Karl May Foundation .
History and task
The Karl May Society was the first organization to take a critical look at the work and life of Karl May. It is still one of the literary societies with the largest number of members in the German-speaking region , but is now part of a large number of Karl May associations and periodicals, such as B. Karl May & Co. , " Karl-May-Haus Information ", the various sponsorship and friend groups as well as various Internet sites in competition. In contrast to these, however, she has so far strictly adhered to her commitment to a purely scientific approach to the popular phenomenon Karl May.
Today KMG has a higher age structure. In the course of a careful modernization, the "Yearbook of the Karl May Society", the main publication organ, has been further opened in terms of content in recent years ( Karl May films , Karl May Festival , Karl May radio plays , Karl May Edits , Karl May updates , etc.).
The KMG is one of the founding members of the umbrella association Arbeitsgemeinschaft Literarischer Gesellschaft und Gedenkstätten . In 2002 the society was awarded the Hartmut Vogel Prize for literary communication from the Working Group on Literary Societies and Memorials (ALG).
Chairperson
- 1969–1971: Bernhard Scheer
- 1971–1999: Claus Roxin
- 1999-2006: Reinhold Wolff
- 2007–2019: Johannes Zeilinger
- Since 2019: Florian Schleburg
Quote
“At least this is what the autodidact Karl May's texts have in common with great literature: they become more and more productive, the more knowledge we have about the nature and fortunes of their author, about their creation, publication and reception conditions when we meet them.
To have made Karl May productive in this sense (after it had made him available in the first place) is the main merit of the Karl May Society in the first 50 years of its existence. Keeping Karl May, the deceiver and missionary by his own grace, the copyist and creator of the world, the self-marketer and prophet of humanity, in conversation in all its complexity (and thus available for future generations at all) will be her main task and her main pleasure, if the society as a whole Developments degrade the reading of printed texts from the 19th and 20th centuries - in the end even 'in old German script' - to a niche phenomenon ...
- while Europe is ironically grappling with the same ghosts as in the years that made the Indian writer a peace fighter. "
literature
- Erich Heinemann : Thirty Years of the Karl May Society 1969–1999. Memories and reflections. Hansa Verlag, Husum 2000, ISBN 3-920421-81-7 .
-
Helmut Schmiedt , Joachim Biermann, Florian Schleburg (eds.): "If you don't experience anything, then you don't do anything glooben!" Fifty years of the Karl May Society 1969-2019 , Husum: Hansa Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3- 941629-23-3 , therein u. a .:
- Joachim Biermann: The Karl May Society 1999–2019 , p. 19 ff.
- Johannes Zeilinger: A handle in the lucky pot. The difficult and successful founding of KMG , p. 83 ff.
- Ekkehard Bartsch: “You can only see clearly with the heart!”. Memories of Alfred Schneider , p. 127 ff.
- Florian Schleburg: No final word. On the continuous enjoyment of various activities with Karl May , p. 199 ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ above: Karl May Society. Karl May Society V., accessed April 19, 2012 .
- ↑ Announcements of the Karl May Society No. 170, December 2011, page 1.
- ↑ http://www.karl-may-gesellschaft.de/index.php?seite=der-vorstand&sprache=de
- ↑ No closing words ... , 2019, p. 210.