Karl May reception in the GDR

The reception of Karl May in the GDR was marked by a sensitive cultural-political ambivalence : Karl May was not forbidden for a long time, but it was also not allowed. His books were not printed in the GDR for a long time because he was considered an imperialist and a fascist . Cultural policy debates ultimately led to Winnetou being printed in the GDR in 1982.

Rejection of the factory in the GDR

"The Karl May chapter in the GDR was finally closed years ago" , the East German Börsenblatt sounded in 1958. The SED bosses did not love the eccentric author, they accused him of " racism " and " German talk " - mainly because Adolf Hitler once named him his "favorite author". The fact that there is a lot of evidence of an openness to other cultures in his pacifist late work was of little interest. Karl-May-Straße in Radebeul was renamed Hölderlinstraße immediately after the war, and the application to found a Karl-May-Gesellschaft was never approved. The Karl May Foundation has been looking after the " Villa Bärenfett " since 1960 . A daycare center moved into the " Villa Shatterhand ".

In the west, the Winnetou films ( Pierre Brice as noble chief and Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand ) set in an Indian boom, and the GDR's DEFA did not want to back off either: In 1965, The Sons of the Great Bear with Gojko Mitić in the leading role turned. Karl May himself remained a taboo.

Allusions

Karl May was one of the favorite authors Lothar Dräger , who until 1990 as a copywriter and in 1976 from 1957 as artistic director for the since 1955 in East Berlin published comic magazine Mosaic worked.

Karl May or his figures are never mentioned in the mosaic , but references to Karl May's works ( Waldröschen , The Treasure in Silbersee , The Blue-Red Methuselah or the Orient Cycle ) can still be seen. Karl May's submission was partially confirmed by Lothar Dräger.

Christian Heermann points out that traces of other authors such as Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra , Wilhelm Hauff , Charles Sealsfield , Jules Verne , Friedrich Gerstäcker , Herman Melville , Robert L. Stevenson or Alexandre Dumas can be found in the mosaic .

A tentative attempt

In Abrahim Mamur's violence was a 64-page Karl May booklet that appeared in the Small Youth Series in January 1958 in the publishing house Culture and Progress Ostberlin . The illustrations came from Julius Junghans. It was published with the kind permission of Karl May Verlag Radebeul and contained chapters 4 and 5 of Through the Desert in the text version of the Vienna Karl May edition.

Renaissance

It was not until the early 1980s, when GDR television showed interest in the western films - it was first broadcast in the GDR at Christmas 1982 - that Karl May came on the agenda. The proletarian son was an upright “fighter against the American policy of robbery and extermination”. His works, previously banned from the libraries, were reprinted in 1982 and 1983 - the edition of 250,000 copies by Rudolf Chowanetz published by Neues Leben was sold out in a few days.

State and party leader Erich Honecker personally decided on February 28, 1983 to redesign the Karl May Museum in Radebeul. Care was taken not to use Karl May too much as a figurehead - the “Indian Museum of the Karl May Foundation Radebeul” was to be called “Indian Museum Radebeul” in the future - but a small showcase exhibition about his life was also arranged in the " Villa Shatterhand " found its place.

In 1983 the new stamp was ordered from the museum, a Karl May bust was taken from the stock and the exhibition was developed. Egon Krenz personally attended the exhibition and informed his boss Erich Honecker on January 14, 1985:

“Dear Comrade Erich Honecker! Following your suggestion, the Karl May Museum in Dresden was designed according to the traditions. As comrade Hans Modrow informed me , a new exhibition 'Karl May - Leben und Werk' was prepared in the villa 'Shatterhand'. The villa 'Bärenfett' was completely renovated. It is planned to open the Karl May Museum in its new form on February 9, 1985 “ [...]

Honecker did what he always did when he liked a suggestion: he signed the paper with “I agree. EH ”on the edge. However, the library served the Stasi as a conspiratorial apartment.

From the chronicles of the years 1980–1989:

• 1980
  • The Karl-May-Haus in Hohenstein-Ernstthal is placed under monument protection and included in the district monument list from November 27th.
  • Erich Loest's biographical Karl May novel Swallow, my brave Mustang was published by Das Neue Berlin .
• 1981
  • The Rostock Hinstorff Verlag published the anthology Passion and Love. Trivial prose of the 18th and 19th centuries . The anthology contained on pages 395 to 441 the chapter "Auf Kundschaft" from Mays Durch die Desert .
• 1982
  • The house where Karl May was born will no longer be used as a residence from September; a facade renovation takes place in October.
  • Eckehard Redlin, editor at the publishing house “Das Neue Berlin”, gave a lecture on September 29th in front of 28 listeners in the Lotte Bergtel library in Berlin-Treptow: “Karl May - the trivial literature and our right to entertainment”.
• 1983
  • Erich Honecker decides on February 28th: ​​A small May exhibition is to be integrated into the “Indian Museum” in Radebeul.
  • On March 17, the council of the Hohenstein-Ernstthal district decides to expand the house where Karl May was born into a museum. The "Interest Group Karl May House" is founded. A comprehensive renovation begins in and around the house.
  • In 1983, a 25-part comic series Winnetou and Old Shatterhand was published in drum magazine . The cartoonist was Ernő Zórád. In 1990 Winnetou and Old Shatterhand were repeated, but in episode 18 (death of Nscho-tschis) they were abruptly interrupted with a “conclusion” in bold.
• 1984
  • From February, the “Indian Museum” in Radebeul can again be called the “Karl May Museum”.
  • Since this year May pieces have been performed again on the Felsenbühne Rathen after a break of more than 40 years.
  • You are a greenhorn, sir! is the name of a play by Helmut Baierl based on Karl May's Winnetou I , which was premiered in the East Berlin Theater of Friendship .
• 1985
  • The Karl May Museum in Radebeul opens (after a quarterly renovation phase) with a permanent exhibition on Karl May on the ground floor of Villa Shatterhand .
  • The Karl May House in Hohenstein-Ernstthal opens as a museum on March 12, 1985 after a two-year construction period. The exhibition was conceived by Hainer Plaul. The 10,000. Visitors are welcomed.
• 1986
  • The first film adaptation of a May novel is shown on GDR television: The Bush Ghost .
• 1987
  • The scientific advisory board of the Karl-May-Haus was constituted on October 10, 1987. The members were appointed by the Hohenstein-Ernstthal mayor.
  • The "Freundeskreis Karl May Cottbus" is founded. The chairman is Reinhard Seidler.
• 1988
  • The "Freundeskreis Karl-May-Literatur Leipzig" was founded on March 24, 1988 within the framework of the Kulturbund der DDR .
  • Pierre Brice visits the Karl May Museum in Radebeul and the Felsenbühne Rathen. There he meets the Winnetou actor Jürgen Haase . The whole visit caused a sensation.
  • The "Friends and Supporters Karl May in the Kulturbund der DDR" is founded on September 8, 1988.
  • The non-fiction book The Man Who Was Old Shatterhand. A Karl May biography was first published in 1988 by Verlag der Nation and was written by Christian Heermann . It was the first (and only) biography about Karl May in the GDR. In addition, Hans Wollschläger's biography was published in 1989 and the illustrated bibliography Karl Mays by Hainer Plaul was also published in 1988.
• 1989
  • The Hohenstein-Ernstthaler Karl-May-Stein will be moved to the corner of Lungwitzer and Karl-May-Straße.

Two plays

You are a greenhorn, sir!

You are a greenhorn, sir! is a play by Helmut Baierl based on Karl May ( Winnetou I ), which waspremiered in1984 in East Berlin , in the theater of friendship . Another performance took place in Dessau in 1985.

Soul lust & eye candy

On May 28, 1988 in Dresden , the collage Seelenlust & eye candy . Wagner and Winnetou are honored to be premiered. On March 1 and 2, 1989, the play performed at the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich ; on three weekends (April to June 1989) at the Hebbel Theater in West Berlin (formerly “Theater in Königgrätzer Straße”).

Two exhibitions

In Cottbus

Karl May. From a Cottbus collection there was an exhibition of the District Museum Cottbus , which was shown from January 10 to March 8, 1987 in Branitz Castle . Reinhard Seidler was the initiator. Exhibition themes:

1. The writer Karl May
2. Karl-May-Verlag Radebeul
3. Foreign issues
4. Karl May paperbacks
5. Karl May in the GDR
6. Stage / memorials

Over 200 exhibits were shown. In the course of the exhibition, an art postcard with a Karl May portrait by Eberhard Tacke was printed and sold. The exhibition had 11,569 visitors in eight weeks.

In Pirna

The fantasy of a well-read - under this title Uwe Neßler made objects from his private collection available, which the Pirna City Museum presented from April 25 to May 23, 1988 in the glass pavilion on Solidarity Square.

After the turn

After 1989 there was apparently little work for the Radebeul museum staff. Der Spiegel quotes the director René Wagner as saying: “We only had to change very little for ideological reasons.” Only in the main building of the Karl May Museum did the texts accompanying the exhibition have to be shortened in 1992 - the real socialist passages were deleted. "Class justice" or "imperialist great power aspirations" of the USA can no longer be found in Radebeul .

In the Karl May meeting place in Hohenstein-Ernstthal , a special exhibition on the subject of "Karl May in the GDR" was shown from February 25 to May 5, 2002, which attracted a great deal of attention and was a traveling exhibition throughout Germany for a while.

swell

• Entry in the Karl May Wiki about Karl May in the GDR
• Entry in the Karl May Wiki about mosaics

literature

• Friedrich von Borries , Jens-Uwe Fischer: Socialist Cowboys. The Wild West of East Germany . Edition Suhrkamp, ​​2008.
• Rainer Buck: Karl May in the GDR , in: ders .: Karl May. The Winnetou author and the Christian faith. With a foreword by Jens Böttcher , Moers: Brendow 2012, p. 168 ff.
• Henrik Eberle , Denise Wesenberg (Ed.): Agreed. EH Internal party communications, letters, files and intrigues from the Honecker era . Berlin 1999.
• Wolfgang Emmerich : Small literary history of the GDR . Leipzig 1996.
• Nicolas Finke: When Winnetou conquered Saxon Switzerland - Karl May in Rathen since 1984 (Part 2): 1987–1994 . In: Karl May & Co. No. 136 , 2014.
• Nicolas Finke: The Karl May scene and the Stasi :
  • Part 1: Stasi-Treff Villa Bärenfett . In: Karl May & Co. No. 148 , 2017.
  • Part 2: Observers on the Elbe. Behind the scenes of the “Shatterhand” villa in the second half of the 1980s . In: Karl May & Co. No. 149 , 2017.
  • Part 3: Inside Karl May Museum. Behind the scenes of the “Shatterhand” villa in the second half of the 1980s . In: Karl May & Co. No. 150 , 2017.
  • Part 4: Pretty Best Friends. How the management team of the Radebeul Karl May Museum dismantled itself thirty years ago . In: Karl May & Co. No. 151 , 2018.
• Regina Hartmann: Karl May: "Winnetou", Volume I. On the phenomenon of contemporary and current mass effectiveness , in: Contributions to children's and youth literature , Berlin (Ost), 82 (1987) 28–42; reprinted in: Dieter Sudhoff , Hartmut Vollmer (eds.): Karl Mays “Winnetou”. Studies on a myth (Suhrkamp pocket book materials) , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1989. pp. 467–486.
• Christian Heermann : Karl May in the GDR. In: Karl-May-Haus information number 15 , 2nd US.
• Christian Heermann: The man who was Old Shatterhand . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1988.
• Christian Heermann: Not forbidden - not allowed. Karl May in the SBZ and GDR 1945 to 1960 , in: Bernhard Schmid, Jürgen Seul (ed.): 100 years of publishing work for Karl May and his work 1913–2013 , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May Verlag 2013, p. 79– 82.
• Christian Heermann: Old Shatterhand did not ride on behalf of the working class . Dessau 1995.
• Klaus-Peter Heuer: wooden cladding. The boards in front of the heads of May opponents. On the special exhibition of the Karl May House "Karl May in the GDR" from February 25 to May 5, 2002. In: Karl May House Information Number 16 , pp. 61–66.
• Klaus Hoffmann: In Abrahim Mamur's power. A contribution to the Karl May reception in the former GDR . In: die horen (Volume 178), p. 175.
• Klaus Hoffmann: Karl May. Life and work. Exhibition in the Villa “Shatterhand”. 1988.
• Gerhard Klußmeier : German-German Karl May joint effort. A little Karl May film adventure in the GDR . In: Karl May & Co. No. 117 , July 2009.
• Siegfried Lokatis , Ingrid Sommer (ed.): Secret readers in the GDR. Control and dissemination of illicit literature . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008.
• Erwin Müller, Hans Grunert: Karl May in the GDR , in: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Karl May manual. 3rd edition , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2001, p. 516 ff.
• Ludwig Patsch: Karl May Circular No. 154 , p. 21. (Facsimile in Wiener Karl May Brief 3/2009)
• Hainer Plaul: Illustrated Karl May Bibliography. Verlag Edition Leipzig 1988, 443 pp.
• Hainer Plaul: Illustrated history of trivial literature. Verlag Edition Leipzig 1983, 262 pp.
• Hans Wollschläger: Karl May. Outline of a broken life. VEB Verlag der Kunst Dresden 1989, 411 pp.
• Peter Richter, Uwe Neßler: Pictures from Ardistan. Karl May sites in Saxony . Special issue of the Karl May Society No. 61–63. KMG-Presse Ubstadt 1986 ( online version ).
• Hartmut Schmidt : "You are a greenhorn, sir!" - 1985: Karl May on the stage of the State Theater Dessau . In: Karl May & Co. No. 102 , 2006.
• Hartmut Schmidt: Building blocks for the Karl May reception in the GDR :
  • Part I: "We fundamentally have a different opinion about Karl May" . In: Karl May & Co. No. 145 , 2016, p. 32 ff.
  • Part II: “Search Karl May books on scientific. Arb. " In: Karl May & Co. No. 146 , 2016.
  • Part III: “The Indians were always cruel people with him” . In: Karl May & Co. No. 148 , 2017, p. 58 ff.
  • Part IV: "What a Karl May had no idea about" . In: Karl May & Co. No. 149 , 2017, p. 66 ff.
  • Part V: "Karl May is a reactionary ..." In: Karl May & Co. No. 150 , 2017, p. 60 ff.
  • Part VI: “Similarities between Pollmer, KMG yearbooks and a washing powder package?” In: Karl May & Co. No. 152 , 2018.
  • Part VII: "Karl May - the trivial literature and our right to entertainment" . In: Karl May & Co. No. 154 , 2018, p. 62 ff.
• Ralf Schnell : The difficulty of inheriting. Karl May's adventures in the GDR - materials for a reception story , in: Harald Eggebrecht (Hrsg.): Karl May, the Saxon fantastic. Studies on life and work , Frankfurt 1987, pp. 264–297.
• Joachim Scholl: 50 classics: German writers - Karl May. Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-8369-2580-8 .

Web links

• Poster from 1947 as find no.246

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Joachim Scholl: 50 classics: German writers - Karl May. Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-8369-2580-8 , p. 108.
2. ^ Karl May Society (SBZ) - Karl May Wiki. Retrieved October 5, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Heermann, p. 43.
4. ↑ Patsch, Circular No. 154 .
5. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Ern%C5%91_Z%C3%B3r%C3%A1d
6. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Reinhard_Seidler
7. ↑ However, Erich Loest's biographical Karl May novel Swallow, my brave Mustang , was published in the GDR as early as 1980 .
8. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Karl-May-Stein
9. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Ihr_seid_ein_Greenhorn,_Sir!_(Berlin_1984)
10. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Ihr_seid_ein_Greenhorn,_Sir!_(Dessau_1985)
11. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Karl_May._Aus_einer_Cottbuser_Sammlung_(Ausstellung)
12. ↑ Der Spiegel 18/1995 (online version) .
13. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/René_Wagner
14. ↑ HOTWeb.de: Karl May meeting place. Retrieved October 5, 2018 (German). 
15. ↑ Nicolas Finke - Karl May Wiki. Retrieved October 5, 2018 . 
16. ↑ Klaus-Peter Heuer - Karl-May-Wiki. Retrieved October 5, 2018 .