"Unfathomable." "This here is a paradise which one cannot conceive." "I revel in the beauty and the bliss of nature." "When we part," "I'll write to my sister about you." ""Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of him with love and adoration, basked in his memory." "He appeared to me as a vision sent from heaven, magical, transfigured, fascinating."" "Thanks." "IN THE LAND OF SAXONY THERE WAS A MAN NAMED" "Karl," "I have so many wrinkles." "Those are the very wrinkles formed in 30 years through me and are why I love you so much." "Dr. Karl May is about to make a world trip." "Perhaps he'll go to America for the 22nd time." "May I ask Dr. May a question?" "Are all your descriptions based on personal experience?" "Every experience is personal, one experiences the dangers oneself." "Now I'm making another journey to the Apaches, where 35,000 warriors are at my disposal." "After the death of my friend Winnetou, I'm now their chief." "Here are the results of my last trip to the Orient, and here are my scars." "And the Henry rifles?" "Tell us something about the Henry rifles." "Mine is the only one of the eight examples to survive." "It's a 25-shooter." "One after the other, of course." "Winnetou's famous silver gun has 254 silver nails, one for each enemy killed." "The nails form a double V, as everyone can see." "That means Virgo Virginum." "After this journey" "I'll go up to the German Kaiser." "Your Majesty, we'll have a shooting match." "I'll show him my rifle." "The rifle will be issued to the German Army, and no nation will be able to resist the Germans." "But how did you get the silver gun?" "You laid that gun alongside Winnetou in his grave." "Correct." "But later, when pursuing the Ogallala Indians on Metsur River," "here, I ran into some Sioux who were plundering Winnetou's grave." "I took possession of the gun and announced this everywhere to prevent further grave desecration." "Dr. May, you are a superb fighter of mature age." "What rank did you reach in the 1870-71 war against France, and what honours did you receive?" "I was in America at the time." "Dr. Karl May speaks 40 languages and can write them as well." "English, French, Spanish, Italian," "Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arab," "Chinese, Japanese and of course all the Indian dialects." "That's obvious, it's his speciality." "I won't begin to recite them all." "I quote the beginning of the Bible in Hebrew:" "And the earth was desolate and empty..." "You must recognize this here, these forests." "You hid here back then." "And now?" "In the carriage of Princess Schönburg-Waldenburg..." "Don't you think back sometimes on the way it used to be back then?" "We've now been together for 25 years." "This is your home." "Our home." "Wait until I return, like last time." "I've got to tell her about Winnetou." "Suddenly everybody in Germany wants to travel." "There's got to be a lot of action." "They all want travel adventures." "Everybody wants to shoot and win incessant victories." "Admit it, you tell fibs sometimes." "What?" "I just mean, you tell her things, like always, which you later can't remember so then they're lost for the books." "Oh sweetie, how do you feel?" "Sweetie!" "Klara, read me some of my mail." ""Dear Mr May, I must express my thanks to you for making me a better person." "Thanks to your stories, I became a Christian and in the noblest sense, a human being."" "This is from three young people." ""We used to spend all our time in bars and get into mischief, but thanks to your books we have been led onto the path of humanity."" ""Aroused to a spiritual and moral life in accordance with the example you have made."" ""I have often quarrelled with God because I am a cripple." "But now I see that what God does is good."" "We must write to Pauline Münchmeyer." "I haven't seen the accounts for years." "She's cheating me." "I have no access to the books." "She wants to sell the publishing house." "She mustn't sell my old novels;" "they don't belong to her anymore." "According to the contract with Münchmeyer, everything reverts to me." "That's a loss of 100,000 gold marks." "Fischer's been negotiating for some time." "That old furniture dealer, he's using my name as an advertisement." "Pauline is our friend." "Your friend." "The "Frankfurter Zeitung" wants to put you on the index." "Who said that?" "A Dr. Fedor Mamroth." "He'll soon be forgotten." "You should read something of mine." "You don't know me." "I like you as you are." "The Pustet Verlag asks, in the name of their readers, about the indecencies in your earlier novels." ""Back door novels of the most questionable sort." "Their content is indecent to the extreme."" "That's what they say of your work." "Your Highness, shall I appear before you as a cowboy or a writer?" "As a writer, Dr. May." "I met you as a writer, and that is how I wish to receive you." "A fine profession." "I've had many professions in my life." "I can well imagine." "Pray for me." "If necessary, we can sue the Münchmeyer publishing house." "Take this." "I was here once with my father." "I remember it very well." "We had to say thank you for the scholarship to the teachers' seminar." "I remember plucking a rose for the gentry." "But my father hit me with the thorns until the dogs drove us away," "so I took the rose back to give to my mother." "Will 50,000 reich marks be enough?" "My God, it's so much money." "Of course." "Six months Egypt, then the Orient:" "Sumatra, Ceylon." "It must be tremendous for Mr May to make this journey for the first time, exactly as in his books." "Yes, now he can afford it." "But believe it or not, it was just 4 or 5 years ago..." "So, I repeat:" ""To Mr A. Fischer," "The 5 novels are my property." "According to the agreement with Münchmeyer, after a run of 20,000 copies, they reverted to me." "They may not be published." "In the event of violation, I shall demand 100,000 reich marks in damages." "If the pseudonym is revealed, a further 500,000 reich marks." "This to be sent to Pauline Münchmeyer with my bill."" "Nonsense, it's just routine." "Mr Fischer knows that Karl May is famous." "This is for you, dear kitty." "And this is for you, little mouse." "Just as life is a voyage between grief and joy, and joy and grief, so these cloths have their two sides." "I see." "White is grief." "This is joy." "Yes." "I cannot travel." "The powers do not wish it." "I have spoken with them." " When?" "Last night." "They told me:" ""On this journey he will understand the purpose of life."" "Come on then." "Look after the women, Dittrich." "According to them your books are brimful of brutality and blood." "200 killed by Winnetou alone." "In that case no one should write about Napoleon anymore." "Your books are to be banned in the schools in Bavaria." "It's of no importance." "Mamroth from the "Frankfurter Zeitung" laughs at you." "I'll prove I came from Saxony." "These are all postcards to editors of newspapers." "They write that you're taking a cure in Bad Tölz because of an illness." "I feel like Samson." "Struggles on all sides, but none from above." "I have to fend them off from all sides, but soon peace will come to me at home." "You'll have to provide proof, stand up against your enemies." "I'm no longer the old May." "I drowned him, with great ceremony, in the Red Sea." ""My Dears," "I've got the whole afterdeck to myself." "No one is allowed to get too close to me." "I am treated with great respect." "I even have to say what I'd like to eat, and the cook prepares it just for me." "I haven't admitted being a writer, it is purely the result of the impression I make." "With fondest regards, your Karl May"" "I've something to say to you which I now think is right." "Human actions and thoughts are occupied in making likenesses of paradise." "Yes, this is the task of all peoples, every family and every single writer, to work for the happiness of all humanity." "He who does not do this is not only useless but also dangerous and a poor creature." "Now I understand your calmness in the face of all these attacks." "Poor creatures." "They don't understand a thing." "I'll put Mamroth into my next book." "He'll feel the lash of Karl May's whip." "I'll return and then woe betide them." "Horace Herzfelder, we'll never see each other again" "and that's why we'll never forget each other." "I'll come to you this evening." "You can earn a lot of money with this." "It's fun." "Emma, Emma!" "Hey!" "They're naked, I can tell you!" "He was a sight!" "He had a hat this big around with a ninny on it, and all sorts of teeth here." "Oh!" "What's this?" "Watch this." "Very nice." "And this here, that was a story!" "Look." "Clearing up?" "It's only old stuff." "It's of no worth to us." "We have too much of it anyway, right Klara?" "Clearing up?" "Rearranging, my dear." "I thought... as we're clearing up anyway..." "Rearranging, not clearing up." "Everything must be different when he returns." "Kitty." " Mouse." "Kitty and mouse." "Now the lion's loose!" "Now the lion's loose!" "Get that lion out!" "Charlie, come." "I love you!" "Time to pray!" "I am a virgin you must believe me" "But I do get around the whole wide world" "Even if 6 times 7 Charlies have me," "I'll keep pounding my drum, boom, boom, boom, as a virgin, a virgin, a virgin." "So, that's the Karl May case." "He hasn't been seen for months." "He'll return." "Yes, he'll return." "If he knew me, I wouldn't blame him for not coming back." "He sends postcards from the Orient, but the papers say he's in Bad Tölz being cured of an unmentionable disease." "I read that he's discovered a new paradise in Ceylon." "Vast gold fields, the location of which he refuses to disclose." "He doesn't need them himself." "Only under certain circumstances, like for poor Germans settlers in Asia." "If he were to find a few families, he would tell them his secret and thus help them." "Everything has been confirmed by geological experts, and so on." "As it stands," "Karl May bears the title of doctor illegally." "Self-awarded in Chicago." "He bought it, great." "Arranged by Klara Plöhn, his secretary, who lives in the Villa Shatterhand and a barbarian named John Marlock." "He'd never been out of Saxony when he wrote of his travels, in the first person." "A complete swindler." "Biggest circulation in Germany, it's as big as as the family gazettes'." "It's been proven that he plagiarises... copies... the descriptions of landscapes from encyclopaedias and also other narrative works on the Orient and America." "Winnetou and his adventures as Old Shatterhand and all his journeys are the inventions of a little Saxon of the lowest class." "He's not a Catholic, he's Protestant." "That can't help us." "You're wrong." "For decades he wrote for the "Calendar of Saints"" "only for Catholic readers under the pretence of being a Catholic believer." "Clever of him." "Just the way to sell books." "In his youth he used to write trashy sex stuff." "5 volumes of 5 novels of 600 pages each." ""The Uhlan's Love," "Way to Happiness" etc." "Münchmeyer publishing house." "One example published by Münchmeyer's:" ""The History of Prostitution and its Effects on the Development of Humanity,"" "Dresden, 1874." ""When the American savage pays court to a girl, he calls that 'lighting his rod.'" "Women frown upon romantic visits during the day, but at night, their huts are open to amorous adventurers." "He goes into her hut at night, lights a sliver of wood and approaches the girl." "She knows what he's trying to say." "One can judge a people's level of civilization best by the way they treat their women, particularly in their sex lives."" "He says that the publishers slipped in all the indecent bits." "Can't the manuscripts at the publishers be compared?" "All disappeared..." "The contracts on the return of the manuscripts?" "Disappeared or never existed." "The gentlemen, May and Münchmeyer, were friends." "Verbal agreements, they said." "That can be good or bad..." "for us." "No documents..." "Yes, yes." "What happens if he forbids it?" "If he obtains an injunction?" "The press campaign against May as a perverter of youth will help." "The exposure of his true faith..." "Yes." "He is not Old Shatterhand, and wasn't in America." "Fine, but... what if he takes proceedings against us, or against you, Mrs Münchmeyer?" "He is powerless." "We've got him where we want him." "I know things about him, and he knows I know." "We were friends." "All my husband's assistants had been in prison." "They were all powerless." "We had them where we wanted them." "No blackmail now." "I've got my husband for that, but Karl May is gone." "He'll come." "Thanks, gentlemen." "Continue to make inquiries." "That'll be a nice little case." "If I may, necromancy is practiced at the Mays' house." "Really?" "Interesting." "That could damage his credibility as a witness on oath." "Don't you think?" " Klara Plöhn acts as a medium." "She writes down her nightly sessions and things are handled accordingly." "Karl's wife Emma is very much under her influence." "I foresee a lovely divorce case." "Women's matters are always useful." "You should keep up your friendship with Emma May, so she's on our side." "The letters between Karl May and your husband have disappeared?" "Yes, of course." " Very good." "Nobody knows what was in them." "Keep Emma May for us after the divorce." "Continue your morning walks with her in the Elbe parks." "I'm sorry, there's nothing else I can do." "My publisher Fehsenfeld." "And that's the man I helped make great!" "Who was he back then?" "Just a young man with 1,000 marks in his pocket... from his daddy." "The feature editor from the "Kölnische Volkszeitung,"" "Hermann Cardauns, is now travelling round in the Rhineland." "From city to city." " I saw him myself." "That evening he earned a lot of money... through Karl May." "But the number of visitors is declining." "Thousands of obscene letters have arrived." "To say nothing of the newspapers." "Mud sticks to everything." "Why don't you proceed against Cardauns?" "How can I show him that I'm a descent person?" "But... he's very common," "a workman's son from a slum in the Ore Mountains." "Oh come now." "And if he appeals to the very simple people he writes for, the people who love him, the people he came from and says," ""I'm one of you, help me"?" "Then none of them will read him anymore." "At that time we were colleagues at "Deutscher Hausschatz"" "and at "Guter Kamerad."" "He used to respect me very much, journalist to journalist." "Only I was more successful than he was." "Then suddenly Cardauns turned serious and forgot what he had sold only the day before." "Those were our finest years, weren't they?" "Yes, they were our finest years." "It's a fine thing to be needed, right little one?" "Then you came to the "Calendar of Saints"" "from the Publishing House of the Divine Saviour." "Tell the story of the Holy Father." "Somehow this paper is supposed to have been smuggled in to the Holy Father." "The Holy Father looked at it and nodded:" ""Va bene, va bene!"" "You can imagine the rise in circulation." "But the appearance of the earlier trashy novels has now ruined everything." "In "Kürschner's Literary Encyclopaedia" you appear as a Catholic." "We have to go through this, they accuse you of doing Catholic business as a Protestant." "It's immaterial for a Madonna whether the painter is Catholic or Protestant." "It's as if you, in order to sell better, pretended to be a social democrat and wrote for the SPD party newspaper, when you really belong to the national party." " But most importantly," "I'm a Christian." " Or Muslim, it doesn't matter, right?" " These journalists, they're all hate and envy." "And fear." "So we'll battle on." "What shall I pay you?" "And... what about the doctor title?" "How did that go again?" "One day Münchmeyer's brother said:" ""Good morning, Dr. May." Münchmeyer says it's normal nowadays, and it raises prestige and sales, and it doesn't harm anybody." "But as I didn't protest at once," "I became an honorary doctor through the dishonourable Mr Münchmeyer." "Good night." "We are alone." "We can speak quite openly," "Mr Fischer." "I've come back to put things straight, using everything in my power." "I bought your earlier novels from Pauline Münchmeyer, together with her publishing house in a common business deal." "They are my property and I'll change what I think necessary." "I've obtained an injunction which has already cost you 40,000." "You can have the books back for 70,000." "The books and the documents, and I'll help you fight Pauline Münchmeyer." "70,000 for rights which belong to me?" "Those who want something have to pay." "I'm in the furniture business." "I paid 175,000 marks for the publishing house." "Your books are my main source of profit." "These books belong to me." "Alterations had already been made to these books earlier." "That's professional sabotage." "Proof!" "Do you have anything in writing?" "A Contract?" "Anything on paper?" "There you go." " I have letters." "Where?" "I have the original manuscripts." "I haven't seen any." "And how long were these books in print without any protest on your part?" "I will institute proceedings." "I will fight." "Injunction, punishment for you:" "A fine or imprisonment." "Yes, and that's the end of it." "Careful!" "Look, I'm only a simple businessman." "I haven't had anything to do with academics or journalists, but I know this much:" "Anyone who's been in prison has to be careful." "Didn't I say..." "or did I forget to mention it?" "I know more." "What are you trying to say?" "These newspaper people are always hanging around on the track of sensations." "And I know something" "I could make money with, and you come along and threaten me, threaten my existence with an injunction." "You want to ruin me." "That's not very nice." "A word from me and you're finished." "Understand?" "I've got you where I want you, Doctor." "What exactly do you mean?" " An agreement..." "Yes, an agreement between experienced men, business men." "That old tripe hasn't got a hope now." "People are much more cultured now, even the simple people." "Culture is gaining popularity these days." "Trash only sells today because your name is on it." "I'll make you honest and you alter the books a bit." "You make me honest and remove the taint of trash from the books." "It still stays the same, but it's better this way." "We live in a constitutional state;" "everyone is free to express his opinion, even against a famous man." "You're not rich enough to pay everybody who wants to earn a living writing." "Think of the envy." "Not only people from the provinces are waiting." "The big newspapers were the first." "That's character assassination." "I suffer martyrdom of the soul for business reasons." "1st open letter announced in the "Dresdner Nachrichten."" ""To Prof. Paul Schumann..."" "Can't you stop all that dusting?" "Can I continue reading now?" ""To Prof. Paul Schumann of the art district, feature editor of the "'Dresdner Anzeiger."" "Dear Editor, What harm have I done you?" "Can't you leave me alone?" "You're helping Münchmeyer, the trashy publisher, and advertising books you don't like, books which I did not write and do not want to see in circulation." "Criticise me and my followers, who are also your readers, if you dare, but keep me out of it personally or you'll be sorry." "I carry on in my own way, alone." "I ask it of no one to follow me or to run after me." "I neither disturb nor insult anyone." "Leave me in peace, Professor," "Mr Wart, and your accomplices, and whoever else is behind this." "Radebeul, March 5th, 1904." "Karl May."" "2nd open letter to Prof. Schumann." ""Dear Sir," "Still another..." "Still another schoolboy has run away from home because of me, and therefore has been expelled from school." "This is now the 500th, because 500 newspapers always report on the same runaway schoolboy." "And he didn't run away because of my books but because of an overdose of the books that you and your teachers thrust on him." "The same gentlemen..." "Why is it that the same gentlemen who used to acclaim me now accuse me of depravity?" - "Lewdness" is better." "No, "depravity"' is better." " All right." ""Why?" "The Cardinal of Breslau, the Prince-bishop of Eichstätt, the Archbishop of Preysing, the bishops of Kulm, Limburg, Mainz, Münster, Osnabrück, and Passau." "I know that as a Protestant that doesn't interest you." "You're worked up about the perfection of Winnetou and of Kara Ben Nemsis, who aren't real people anymore." "My God, how pathetic!"" "Have you never heard of necessary characters, of symbols of the soul," "and of good deeds?"" ""Good deeds..."" " Yes." ""Of a soul which refuses to remain submerged?" "The yearning of man for beauty and perfection?" "From adventures of freedom... and purity?" "If you twist my earnest struggle for knowledge, which I sacrifice many a good night's sleep for, into moral deformity in order to make me the laughing stock of your readers, you can accept as thanks the last words of my poem:" "In silence I let the flames beat about me, for metal can only be purified in fire." "But I would like to say this to my foes, my executioners is:" "I would not like to be in your position." "You're starting that doctor business again." "Why are you so insulted?" "Why can't I, a successful author, have an academic title, Professor?" "Does it make you distrustful or envious?" "I received such a title years ago from France, from the University in Rouen." "That's right, from Rouen." "I did not refuse it." "And now I've got one from Chicago for my "Silver Lion."" "But only Germany doesn't recognize it." "Writing about this to Kürchner doesn't worry me." "Only someone who takes this kind of thing seriously would do that, gentlemen." "I'm in the happy position of not having to need this sort of thing." "That's what a gentleman from the Saxon Ministry of Culture said to me." "Unfortunately he's now dead."" "They'll get a surprise in Styria." "Karl May in person before the district court of Leoben." "I'm not going there with you, especially beforehand." "We have our reasons." "Please read it out again." "Sure." ""It can be proved that the alleged journeys are pure fabrication, that the accused Karl May is not a Catholic but a Protestant, that he not only wrote for Catholic readers, but also wrote obscene texts and published them under a different name." "When the charges were brought against him, the accused showed signs of insanity." "Whether really insane or just feigning is still not known." "He was thereupon taken to a lunatic asylum."" "Yes, yes." ""We are not able to state whether he is still there."" "It is hard to find out." ""Leoben District Court, October 15th, 1904"" "Dear colleague and Christian, Father Willibrod Bessler." "You can encourage me by praise or destroy me by reproach," "for you are an honourable man, as the writer said." "With reference to my journeys and adventures," "I have provided sufficient proof with the postcards from all over the world." "I would certainly have sent you proof, had I known at that time of your existence" "and of your interest." "On the subject of the earlier novels now described as indecent," "I do not wish to comment here as I'm engaged in a very lengthy legal process, now in the third instance, with over 50 witnesses." "I ask for your patience until that case has been decided." "I only wish to say that none of the charges are true." "None of the texts in question are mine." "I have no proof, because my documents were stolen, but I will nevertheless fight to the utmost." "Now as to the signs of insanity, in my hotel I used to practise the language of the Nanaqua Indians." "A housemaid heard me and started gossiping all over the place." "A Christian and colleague took the first opportunity of writing about this." "This should be punished with no less than 5 years imprisonment." "Or, who dreamed this up?" "Who's behind this?" "So, Karl May was crazy and was put into a lunatic asylum." "Not a word of regret from him, no." "Satisfaction, joy, Christian mockery." "Journalism, just plain journalism, but what kind of a journalist is that?" "Or wasn't he expressing his own opinion?" "I mention only the name Cardauns, but I'll come back to that later." "Extremely interesting is one passage in parenthesis:" ""Whether really insane or just feigning is still not known."" "Naturally, May is lying again." "He is a Protestant." "He wrote obscene novels." "Now he's not only mad, but what is worse:" "He's feigning madness, pretending to be insane so that people won't think he's quite so depraved." "That's the idea behind this." "And if Karl May's publisher now proves that the article damages him commercially?" "Oh?" "It's intentional?" "Is that how it is?" "We are not only dealing with noble values, but with business." "We're dealing with..." "Father, we're dealing with competing authors of juvenile books." "If one is read too much, the other's not read at all." "That's all this is, right?" "But as a priest in charge of countless school libraries in Styria alone, quotable for many other states..." "Should that be the responsibility of just one person?" "Can you in your soul take this responsibility?" "You're a functionary of the church, a representative of certain ideologies with the strength and the apparatus of power behind them." "You are an intellectual and not a private individual." "We should consider this, but I don't think you understand." "You bear responsibility in a country where people are just beginning to learn to read." "Responsibility for seeing they use reading to rise up, to free themselves by widening their imagination through books." "Yearning souls are enthralled within them." "Imprisoned in their castles which have been transformed into prisons." "Books, books, books... or imprisoned souls who have written themselves free." "Thanks, now I understand." "And I thank you." "I write fairy-tales." "But no one must guess that they are only parables." "For if they knew that, I would achieve nothing." "I must become a fairy-tale myself, become my own fairy-tale." "That will be an audacious move that could easily destroy me." "But what does the fate of a single individual matter when one is dealing with the vast and lofty issues of the whole of humanity?" "Here, look at this." ""Even Karl May, the popular writer, must admit that Father Willibrod Bessler is an honourable man."" "But that was meant ironically." " I know, but it's written here." "Was I dreaming?" "We won after all." "The Father has retracted." "He only retracted the lunatic asylum story." "He said nothing about you being Protestant, and nothing about the indecencies." "Nothing was retracted." "Nothing about whether you were describing personal experiences or not." "It can't go on like this." "Let's hope for the best." "Cardauns of the "Kölnische Volkszeitung," my main opponent, did not appear at all at the proceedings." " Exactly." "Yes, he said that." "Yes, he said that." ""You are Germany's greatest writer."" "You know that." ""The kind of writer who only appears once in a century."" "Yes, typical Father lldefons Schober." "I looked into his soul." ""Your praises," "I know because I travel, are sung by the poor people here in the mountains, in parlours, and by the old."" ""You are a great theologian." "On the third Sunday in Lent, when I have prepared my parish for confession," "I'll talk about the death of Old Wabble in the... in the pulpit, together with Klekipetra's speech, and make my parishioners repent and grieve."" "Yes." ""...repent and grieve and think about the materialists." "There are also some hard-boiled types among the church-goers." "In the future, they'll all read Karl May." "You are an apostle."" "Write that down." ""Keep it up, Mr May!" "Those who read you are immune to social democrats, and a little flame of faith is kindled again."" ""This is clear to everyone."" "That makes 6 letters for the "Dresdner Anzeiger."" "No interviews." "It is a private invitation to coffee, if I may." "Rudolf Lebius, journalist, editor, publisher and distributor of the "Sachsenstimme" in Dresden." "Former social democrat." "Former." "This is Mr Dittrich, military historian 1870-71." "What do you want?" "What do you want?" " I want help you." "I need a lot of money." "And you... you must earn a tremendous amount." "This is colossal." "What's your circulation now?" "You must remember that each copy is read by at least 10 people." "You have no idea how popular you are." "You are a great man and that's big business." "And I want to help you." "Nice place." "Fireplace, warm." "Lovely." "What's this fellow doing here?" "Didn't even make an appointment." "And I can cook for all these people, unbelievable!" "Nonsense!" "And Karl..." "I'm fed up!" "But I'll do it somehow." "We editors and book peddlers generally earn very little." "But we also want to live well so we sell ourselves." "Who pays most owns us." "It's a matter of what's in the air, of something you want to hear." "It's similar to fashion that way." "The main thing is to stand out, offer something new, something different." "That always works." "Karl May always sells, one way or another." "He who drinks is a true man, that's what I say." "Look, everyone has his weak spot." "Everyone." "Every business owner, every worker, every clerk, every... every policeman, every judge, every lawyer, and you too!" "I do too, of course, but I have to be careful in finding out the weak spot in others." "Investigate secretly, if I am a true man." "Once you've found it, the rest is child's play." "You publish in your paper a little comment which tells the person that you know everything, and more." "But in such a way that he can't sue you." "Then I've got him under my thumb, and that's the public's thumb." "Oh?" "The master is rather touchy?" "That's okay." "He'll get over it." "I get that often." "You can divide people into sheep and goats, into masters and slaves, into the obedient and the commanding." "You know where we belong." "He who wants to stop following the herd has to forget his herd, like the Doctor." "Then everyone will follow him regardless of which herd he joins." "They'll all follow." "Followers and boss." "Of course he can change, depending on the fashion." "One can convert, change their mind, but the change must be made with warmth and conviction." "He can do that, our Dr.," "I noticed it right away." "They didn't eat much." "Spend the whole day cooking and they don't even eat properly." "Shall we give it to the dogs?" "Come on." "What's wrong with the dogs?" "They don't even want the expensive meat?" "Come, Elfie, eat up now." "Come and look us up after the next art exhibit for coffee and lunch." "You'll have a lot to tell us about your experience in the Mays' house, and about old times." "Come for a visit." "This will benefit both of us." "Mr May, you have a wonderful wife." "But that's not so important for Mr May." "Do you know my last "Winnetou?"" " No." "You should read it." "Then you'll know why my young readers love me so much." "Readers loving... interesting..." "Yes?" "Lebius?" "Editorial office "Sachsenstimme?"" "Am I reading this correctly?" "You want money?" "You are low on capital?" "You would like to have a loan for 3 years at 5 percent for several thousand marks?" "Three, six or 10?" "It'd be enough?" "Yes." "Yes, fine." "Good." "Yes." ""I would like to publish Dittrich's brochure about you, together with the letters to the editor including those written by Dittrich." "There's absolutely no risk."" ""I'm backed by Jewish interests." "Christmas trade will bring it all in again." "That also guarantees us our great number of academic personnel." "Yours respectfully, Rudolf Lebius."" "I have one as well." " The morning mail." "Listen to this." ""Dear Mr Dittrich," "I will give you 1% commission." "You have my word in writing." "I do not need more than 10,000 marks." "I would also take less." "Could you try to convince Dr. May?" "Yours sincerely, Rudolf Lebius."" "Here's number 3." ""Dear sir," "A certain Lebius, editor of the "Sachsenstimme"" "told a gentleman that he was writing an article attacking you." "I heard everything." "A friend warns you against the man." "B."" "Nice bit of blackmail." " What do we do?" "Nothing." "And above all don't let it upset you, and no money." "All lies." "He's a criminal." "The blackmail is a forgery." "He probably wrote it himself." "He's lying, as usual." "Remember his doctor title." "You can't prove his guilt yourself." "That will happen most elegantly." "There's a sixth-former who wants to work for me." "He's a budding colporteur and a Karl May fan." "He goes to school with the son of a senior court official, and he naturally knows a thing or two." "At lunch, the father tells him about his now famous former prisoner in the house of corrections." "It's a crime, I tell you!" "The stench out of the depths of the world of crime stings you like a flame in your face." "This student is having a go at his future career and will earn his stardom for 10 pfennigs a line in "The truth about Karl May."" "Good?" "It's as easy as that." "I need confirmation from the court." "The whole thing has to be official." "If you insult Karl May's lawyers, they'll sue for slander." "And then you'll irritate the court." "He began as a producer of dirty books." "All of us together:" "Sixth-formers, teachers, Catholics, Protestants, with us literary men at the forefront of course, will burn his books." "This ulcer!" "This canker!" "This poison for the German people!" "Throw his books out of every German house, and the German reader will be healthy again." "He's hand in glove with his former fellow convict, Max Dittrich:" "A syphilitic, financially dependent on May." "Mr Lebius, you're exciting yourself." "Incidentally, Karl May told me" "I should read his last "Winnetou" book, so that I would know why German boys love him." "Love!" "With this gun, he can shoot monograms in the target!" "Like this:" "Boom, boom, boom..." "It's so fast you hardly see it." "And this is the bear-killer." "It's a wonderful gun." "Cheers!" "Cheers!" ""This was the only German sparkling wine that was served on April 21st in the buffet at the Exhibition Palace to celebrate the 70th birthday of the King of Saxony."" "When the King of Saxony visited us for the first time, he dropped his gun, the bear-killer of course." "What a noise it made!" "Mrs May spotted the reason at once:" "The gun is too heavy." "Nothing about my past." "That was a long time ago, 30 years, and it's probably been deleted from the files anyway." "I won't just let them butcher me." "I'll sue him for slander because he wanted to report me to the Bar Council." "My partner, Mr Klotz, will plead my case." "It's, it's..." "It's just unbelievable." "When the blackmail case was heard," "I proposed a prison sentence because a fine just isn't an adequate penalty." "I wanted a deterrent once and for all." "After all, not a private person, but a respected author had been libelled." "Damage, enrichment, coercion or blackmail and so on:" "Slander." "At the words, "respected author," he started to shout, spoke about an "implausible person"" "and declared that I must've known." "Which I denied." "Whereupon criminal charges against Lebius were dismissed, which I supposedly hypocritically and maliciously covered up, which is why he is bringing me before the Bar Council, and so on." "I'll have inquiries made at court into whether there's any truth in what I've been accused of." "Perhaps it's already been properly deleted." "Excuse me for interrupting, but the best thing to do is to admit everything and don't start the case at all." "For it'll be real hell." "They'll try for a settlement." "And if you don't agree, you're obstinate, inhumane and you've only got yourself to blame if you proceed to the bitter end in the vain hope that even the most innocent party can win with humanity," "by bribery, or if you're someone of consequence." "But are you of consequence?" "That's the question, are you of consequence?" "Your reputation's ruined." "And I wouldn't count on extenuating circumstances." "Not at all." "But surely you're not trying to persuade Mr May to do nothing." "What did Lebius do in your case?" "You had a childless marriage, but two children from a minor." "Adultery, child abuse..." "Think of the embarrassing questions." "Incest with another child..." "Constantly being watched by private detectives, because of some syphilitic, nervous complaint." "A semi-invalid." "That's the fate of poor weavers." "Fate of poor weavers?" "Neighbours and family had to appear in court." "I'm dead to them." "Lebius has to declare that his allegations are false, and pay all the costs." " Yes, that's right." "You've won." "Lebius is finished in Dresden." "But now he's continuing in Berlin." "That's murder of the human soul." "There's murder of the human body, and punishment for it, but there is also murder of the soul and there must be a punishment for that as well." "That is my steadfast belief, therefore sue him." "As I was riding through the desert with my friend Hadji Halef Omar," "I noticed that my little brave friend was afraid of his wife." "I laughed at him, but he said:" ""I'm the master of the house."" "But life can also be dangerous here in Germany." "Recently, while travelling in Lower Saxony, doing research for a novel about the life of the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, I was actually arrested as a French spy." "I had drawn some roads, and the course of the Elbe." "I spoke to some people, and as it is my way, gave them a few gold coins." "But I was saved by a telegram from Radebeul, which read:" ""Karl May resides here, lives a reputable life" "and..."" ""...and is well known for his benevolence."" "For his benevolence?" "For his benevolence!" "Quick, the cuff!" "Max!" "Maxy!" "Perhaps Dr. Bernstein could concede." "You haven't even negotiated yet or questioned witnesses." "A settlement is never slanderous." "The truth lies in the middle, that's what I say." "I could just as well claim that you've been murdered, but you're alive and healthy." "The truth doesn't always lie in the middle." "You are not half-dead, neither am I am half-lying." "Dr. Bernstein is accused of having known about the criminal past of Karl May but..." "The whole thing's a libel by Mr Lebius and has not been proved." "I will now have Mr May's criminal record read out." "You misunderstood me." "You obviously think that the files have been destroyed." "Wrong." "There are also admirers of Karl May at court." "We read literature as well, the writers and their stories." "This is the soil from which they grew, the stuff dreams are made of." "Our writer's soul seems to have come out of a swamp." "I must ask you to refrain from such remarks." "We are only trying to get at the truth." "You're destroying a human life." " Oh?" "Oh, yes." "There it is." "Thanks." "For example, unauthorized appropriation of a clock and a pipe, from a colleague, a trade school teacher." "Regardless of his lies, he was convicted and sentenced for the first time, to 6 weeks' imprisonment in 1862." "Do human rights no longer exist?" "Oh, yes." "His name was struck off the candidates list for the teaching profession." "Leipzig, June 8th, 1869, after more recent criminal acts, 4 years and 1 month of imprisonment." "All that's 30 years ago." "Today the man earns 80,000 marks a year." "He's Old Shatterhand." "And he gets letters and visits from very prominent people." "Here is another leaflet from 1869:" ""May, Karl Friedrich." "Former teacher from Ernstthal, who is now on remand for numerous crimes escaped from the prisoners' van during transport, despite being shackled." "Every effort must be made to recapture him." "Recent trial on April 13th, 1870 in Mittweida district court on charges of petty theft, grand theft, fraud, as well as resisting arrest and forgery." "His recidivism must be taken into account."" "Can't you see that you're being mislead?" "It's clear that this man wanted to provoke you in order to make notes on some restricted files." "I withdrawal my application and take over all costs." "You're a murderer!" "I remind you that this is a public session with unrestricted access for all." "Something must be done at once." "You mustn't see us anymore." "You must look upon us as if we're dead." "Think of us as dead, dead, dead." "Karl will give you 3,000 a year so that you can live well." "You're not the type for Karl, you never have been." "But we've only been married... for 22 years." "That's terrible." "Didn't you ever notice that before?" "I'm sorry... that it had to come to this." "We must first wait for the night." "We must." "It's decided." "You may stay here until the 10th of October." "We're leaving today and will send you news." "If you don't sign what Karl gives you now then woe betide you." "Is that an order from my parents?" "I saw your mother die at your birth and spoke with your father tonight." "Did I tell you?" "I got a letter from Peter Rosegger:" "He is eagerly following my ordeal with compassion." ""Your victory is complete and unconditional." "All novels have been modified, not forged." "Karl May is the man he always was." "Yours, Peter Rosegger."" "Now everything will be all right, Karl." "END OF PART 1" "THE SOUL IS A VAST LAND INTO WHICH WE FLEE" "Karl May and Emma Pollmer have divorced." "She continually robbed her husband, wasted money, stashed away 36,000 marks that she stole from purses, etc." "She appropriated business letters for her friend," "Pauline Münchmeyer, her husband's opponent, insulted her husband in public, in the presence of Klara Plöhn, calling him by the name of "Louis,"" "which was an affront to his honour." "Witnesses:" "Klara Plöhn and her mother." "Both are now being cared for in the May house." "Going quite well." "Lately, Karl May has avoided being alone with Emma, 18 months without... marital intercourse, ate only food previously eaten by the servants, slept alone in the attic, lost weight, no question of working any more." "At the most he goes for walks with the dogs," ""Little one" and "Angel," on the banks of the Elbe." "He described her purpose in life as spreading gossip about his homosexuality and perversions." "Emma Pollmer was forbidden to go on using the name of May and to come within 100 km of Karl May's residence in Radebeul near Dresden." "Monthly allowance, 200 marks, the same as the secretary, Klara Plöhn, now Mrs May." "I'd like to know more about his books." "He belongs to that strange breed of convicts who write in prison." "He committed his first offence at the teachers' seminar." ""Responsible for the candle inventory for the classroom, he stole 6 whole candles, or one pound of wax, as he said himself, scrapings for the Christmas tree." "He hid them for 2 weeks without remorse and was reported by two students and caught." "The teachers reported to the consistory and Seminar Director Schütze called him a 'diabolic character'."" "And so on, and so on." "That's how he began." "He was also very sensitive." "What's Lebius doing?" "He's with Emma Pollmer and conducting inquiries in the Ore Mountains." "This morning I read in the cards that I will be visited by a gentleman who looks exactly like you." "He was to bring news." "Here, my wife and children." "Isn't that odd?" "And now you've come." "Your gifts are very convincing." "You should record your observations." "They're not observations." "They are insights, visions, a way of looking at life." "You mustn't mention them to anyone." "Karl would never forgive me." "You're the last person I should say something like that to." "I'll settle a pension for you, just in case." "What you get is so pitifully small." "You've been cheated." "You think so?" " If you want I'll give it to you in writing." "And... now my personal advice:" "Sell all of your jewellery, yes, it makes the right impression for a woman who gets too little money from a divorced husband." "And..." "I know somebody for that." "I don't know." "Well?" "Think of the cards, and on the encounter... and on the help." "And that's me." "Both of us have to protect him from himself in the interest of his great work!" "And... and it's our duty to the German people" "in times like these." "You're so nice and polite but you must promise me that you won't write a thing about it and that you won't say anything." "Well, what do you want to know?" "There once was a king in Thule who was true all the way to the grave" "As his mistress lay dying she gave him a golden cup..." "All the papers are full of it:" "Marriage scandal." "And everybody knows that I became famous without a lot of affairs with women." "Are you the former deserter," "Louis Napoleon Krügel?" "So?" "That's over." "Went to prison for it." "Do you know a man named May," "Karl Friedrich?" "From back then, I mean." " We were together in the forests." "I knew Karl." "You can write the story of your life." "You'd be in print." "I already was." " No, respectably, as an author of tales of robbers." "You were there." " Yeah, a few times." "We were a band of robbers in the Ore Mountains, carried out raids daily." "Mostly market women." "They always have something on them:" "Money or wares... or life." "A wretched life!" "The whole region was in a flurry." "Soldiers and firemen combing the forest." "Like Schinderhannes in Spessart." "And May?" "Was no better than I was." "I taught him a little myself." "Specialized as a conman." "Collected money disguised as an official." "Yes!" "I heard he killed his grandfather-in-law." "Not much class about him either, that Charly." "I've won." "My case went right up to the supreme court in Berlin." "60 witnesses and experts, over 60,000 marks damages." "Poor Pauline." "Now she'll have to pay up, pay the whole thing." "Fischer is dead." "His son-in-law will have to admit that the books were forged and make the necessary changes." "What terrible vengeance has God's hand, wreaked in the camp of our bitterest enemies." "But we made it through." "The following has been established:" "A family of drunkards, bullies and suicides." "Father a weaver, part-time pigeon breeder, a ruffian who beat his children with a leather strap." "Mother was a midwife." "According to Lebius, people hid their possessions when she came." "13 children, 9 of whom died before the age of 2." "You can imagine the conditions." "Riffraff who had to improve their lot by sewing gloves for corpses." "They begged for potato peels to eat." "May was blind until he was four." "On behalf of Pauline Münchmeyer we will report Karl May for perjury... to the public prosecutor in Dresden regarding the extreme manipulation of witnesses." "No one will believe a criminal." "Tell Seyfert he wants to have Larrass as examining magistrate." "He has an obligation to me." "We have no other choice." "I'll go through three courts again." "300,000 in damages!" "This time it's a matter of life and death." "There won't be any winners." "That alone will cost over 100,000, Madam." "You live from it." " We all live from it." "He lives from it as well." "No works in his old age without this last test." "Not the last two novels, 3rd and 4th volume of "In the Kingdom of the Silver Lion,"" "no "Ardistan and Djinnistan,"" "no "Peace on Earth,"" "no "Life's Confessions."" "Is that cynical?" "Life is cynical." "Yes, we all life off this case, he most of all." "We only earn money." "He needs our hell for his redemption." "He needs us more." "He will work out a system which will explain his life as a great test," "as a passage to triumph ending in light." "And for this he needs our hell and he shall have it." "Through me, for I love him." "Madam," "I will continue to conduct your business after his death, because he'll die after his victory in court, after all that we will do." "I know him." "His new work can only germinate when's he's in a state of collapse." "All in all, devil's work but a good deed." "Public Prosecutor Seyfert, Examining Magistrate Larrass, two officials, a recording clerk." "House search." "My employers are not home." "Don't make difficulties." "We've already consulted the chimney sweep." "As Mr Gerlach can't stop tormenting me, carry on." "But this is the act of a mean rascal." "The fact that Gerlach could go so far, and you can tell him this, has seized my very soul, and has robbed me of one of my cherished ideals:" "Faith in German justice." "Please," "Dr. Larrass is an academic." "We were in the same students' corps," "Gerlach too." "He's a reserve officer, and son of a counsellor of justice." "Please show more respect." "Here, a will." "A will?" "Surely he hasn't got children we don't know about?" "Even better." "He is leaving his entire fortune to a foundation for poor artists and candidates for the teaching profession." "A tribute to his youth." "The foundation of a criminal and writer of obscene books for the state of Saxony." "That won't stop them from taking the money." "They'll take the money, then the wrangling begins." "I foresee dealings between responsible parties, custodians of the inheritance." "Yes, if May continues to sell so well." " Or even better." "A doctor's diploma from Chicago, from John Marlock, barber!" "It's worthless, but take it along." "Vanity..." "A contract between Karl May and Selma Werner concerning a tombstone." "Receipt for 36,000 marks." "36,000 marks!" "7,000 marks for the painter, Sascha Schneider." "That makes 43,000 marks all together, all for posthumous fame." "Here's another for 4,000 as a gift for Sascha Schneider." "4,000..." "A contract between Karl May and the Fehsenfeld Publishing House." "Guarantee from 1892 onwards for 30,000 marks yearly." "Unbelievable." " Wait a minute." "What's this?" "A considerable donation for the school gymnasium in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, his birthplace." "The donation is refused, for moral reasons, of course." "There's nothing you can do now to prevent your early crimes from becoming public knowledge." "You have to accept that." "What's this?" ""The Schut."" "Dr. Hermann Cardauns." "Dr. Peter Mamroth." ""The Occult." "First and Last Proposal."" ""Homesickness," "Job," "Chapel on the Lake,"" ""Earthly Grief,"" ""The Woodcarver."" ""All my life I've known how to carve the saviour out of wood."" ""Homesickness."" ""I will return." "All around I see men striving for goals that are not my goals." "I want to go back home." "I may be scorned for wanting to return to where I was as a child." "But I want to go back to those blessed days."" ""Job." "Strike me, torment me," "I will come..." "I will come up to thee." "Slowly and steadily." "Each hour of torment I will lend thee my ear."" "May is a man with serious previous convictions." "Why doesn't he just take up his gun and "sounds and bounds and behold,"" "drive all the lawyers out of his villa?" "I don't understand it." ""Chapel on the Lake." "I hear the tinkle of a tiny bell above the listening lake." "That always brings a feeling of delight and of sorrow."" "Enjoy your meal." ""Bliss which exhorts me:" "Pass away and believe in me." "Something undreamt of on earth awaits you in heaven."" ""Earthly Grief"'" ""When you see earthly grief standing at your bed, think not that it will be gone in the morning." "Earthly grief is sent to you out of love so that it will lead you straight to the heart."" "All this is a plot, the witchcraft and hatred of my former wife, Emma." "That's right, Examining Magistrate Larrass, that's her old lesbianism coming out." "The taste from the hell of Emma Pollmer's demons." "She burned all the contracts with Münchmeyer." "If she hadn't done that, all would be saved." "Mammary gland dependencies, abdominal vampirism." "Cruel excesses of a spiritualistic and poisonous spider." "The perverted demon devours herself if she can't destroy others." "Since my last journey I haven't had meat, nor tobacco, and sexual abstinence has been my precept." "But she speaks of lascivious letters describing lewd dreams." "Rose caterpillars take revenge on their enemies." "She's practicing mental freemasonry with perverse women on Karl May altar in Weimar." "She has been the cause of all misfortune up to this very day." "Free me from her hypnosis, Examining Magistrate Larrass." "I fear for my house, my existence." "My work stands before collapse." "Banning her from Weimar is no help." "She should be locked up and rendered harmless, squeezed like a red-cheeked apple in which the worm nibbles." "The soul of the woman should be the daily source of new ideas, a provider of power, nobility, happiness and enthusiasm." "The whole thing isn't a question of law." "It's more of a fad of Larrass and Seyfert's." "I'm looking in the fireplace ashes now..." "But Larrass isn't even responsible for that." "Actually, he has the letter "F" and not "M" and is trying so hard." "But Seyfert was in the same students' corps as Gerlach." "Actually, it doesn't matter." "Somebody's got to do it." "So..." ""Villa Shatterhand." "Dear Mr Biedermann, why haven't you..."" ""Karl May in Africa." "Railway Assistant, Mr Biedermann, Bruchsal..."" "Look." "What's this?" ""Distinguished Gentlemen," "Even you, whom I grew so very fond of..."" ""Southwards."" "What else do we have." "He was there too." "The Pyramids of Giza." "I have to tell you that your mail is blocked until further notice." "All incoming and outgoing correspondence will be monitored." "You can pick up letters at the court... and drop them off." "Mr May, you probably know from which faculty Prof. Schneider comes." "Do you know him well?" "We are applying for a withdrawal of Public Prosecutor Seyfert and Examining Magistrate Larrass on the grounds of bias, misuse of authority, excess of zeal." "This house search, Minister of Justice..." "A withdrawal?" "That hardly ever happens." "Plaintiff's council is well-known, a good friend of two members of the judiciary concerned." "We'll check that." "You don't understand." "This is not a matter of substituting officials but whether Larrass is worthy of being examining magistrate at all." "This is a matter of a trashy publishing house and its accomplices, some of them in the judiciary." "We would not hesitate to bring the matter before Parliament." "I will refuse due to lack of proof." "The case will continue." "It would lead us nowhere." "Keep talking, I have thick skin." "We have proof." "This isn't just about investigating a writer of erotic texts, but about a writer of homoerotic literature, if you excuse the expression." "Winnetou and Old Shatterhand in our classical grammar schools!" "Minister." "Rudin, Romo!" " It's just not true." "Exactly." "That's why he should watch his step." "We're going out soon." "Peace on earth and satisfaction for mankind." "Peace on earth, but Dr. Kürschner stopped my novel, "In Terra Pax," "Peace on Earth."" "But that's impossible." " He wants a book on China, patriotic, for young people, with adventures and so on." "Boxer Rebellion, Tsingtao, scenes of cruelty." "I've got to be up-to-date for the young." "A German monument in contemporary style." "A China on whose soil German blood has flowed, on whose coast the German eagle found a place in the sun." ""No quarter will be given, no prisoners made." "May the name of Germany be so well known that no Chinese will ever again dare even to look sideways at a German."" "This man will be as famous as the Huns... for cruelty." "He has a crippled arm, the German Kaiser." "These are the same people who call the Chinese "apes with braids."" "That wouldn't be good for you." "You need peace and sunshine." "Kürschner must have been astonished by your text." "He ordered it to be printed straightaway, without reading it, just like they always do there." "They probably said, good old May'll manage it." "Old Shatterhand will chop the braids off the Chinese." "But he's made a mistake, the old crook." "Nations also sleep." "Of course their sleep lasts longer than the night of a human life, but these nations wake up again if they don't get choked." "And when morning comes, woe betide those who took them for dead, who laughingly stolen their heritage." "In the morning, the soul returns to the body." "That's for sure." "You've always worked too hard." "40 pages a day for 30 years." ""I've got that tired autumn feeling," "and would like best to depart." "The leaves around me are falling." "How long, Lord, do I still have to stand?" "I am only a humble blade of grass but I also bear a spike." "And even if the sun forgot me," "I grew out of gratitude for you."" "Karl, this is very important." "Yes or no?" "Did you say that you'd had a relationship with Winnetou?" "Try to understand, from the point of criminal proceedings this is important." "You earn your living by maintaining that Winnetou actually lived." "Blood brotherhood with Old Shatterhand, with you." "Mr May, you look dumbfounded." "Everything will be destroyed." "I see grass growing here." "No streets." "No houses." "No trees." "No wind to blow through them." "But there will be stink and noise, dreadful noise." "Mr May, may I invite you to a drink..." "This way." "After you." "Coat." "Hans, water." "This is my kingdom." " Very nice." "You don't have to say that." "This way, please." "You won't find anyone to serve you, everyone wants to be the master." "Liberty, equality but not a trace of fraternity." "Not much psyche but plenty of psychology." "It's no solution to take everything away from the rich and give it to the poor." "When socialism's been achieved, then the real misery begins." "But Mr May, I'm surprised to hear that from you." "You're so successful." "You always win." "You know how to do good and you grasp things right away." "Stop that!" "Normally you're always right." "But in life we mostly lose." "We are weak and small, in the wrong, we steal," "and we're aggressive money-earners nevertheless." "Do you know why that is?" "That's a sad story." "A little mark of esteem for your birthday..." ""Peace on Earth."" ""Karl May:" "Near the Afterlife."" "Yes, yes." ""Winnetou."" "Winnetou." "Winnetou." ""Through Wild Kurdistan."" ""Winnetou Two"" "One." ""Schut"" "You're the only one who knows the real me." "You're a spiritual expert, Sascha." "I'm an atheist, before an epiphany of Dante, on the threshold of the 20th century." "You misunderstand yourself." " No, no." "You are the poor people's Faust." "Reaching for the light, restless, always half way between heaven and hell." "Our illiterates just, learning to spell, understand you." "You ought to accept the Bible order." "He who sympathizes with the Church and the school wins over the Educational Ministry." "It'll give you a chance for a professorship, and you'll have the firm economic basis" "that you of all people need." "I'll help you," "Professor Sascha Schneider." "I'll go my own way, with nobody, for nobody." "We are travelling into great escapist landscapes, each in his own way." "Are you Old Shatterhand?" "I was." "Are you Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi?" "I was." "You aren't anymore?" "No, not anymore." "Neither of them?" "Neither of them." "Since when?" "Tell me." "Since the two names accomplished what they had to accomplish." "In them" "I have given up riddles from which the human ego steps forth like a radiant lad." "...steps forth like a radiant..." "Damned women!" "I won't be coming to super." "I'll make my coffee-soup later, myself!" "Effendi, what do I hear out of your mouth?" "Who'd have thought?" "All the weapons are gone and the horses too?" "You know what you do?" "You cease to be what you were, what you are." "You can never again write the kind of books you have written." "You die; you must become someone completely different." "Bear in mind, Effendi, if you no longer write in the way we know, nobody will talk about you any more." "You're wrong!" "I'm taking up another life." "A more noble, a more beautiful life." "Starting today, I will write noble texts." "One will read my old works... that's it, read my old work in a whole new light." "The soul will emerge, which lives in them." "It's happened!" "Karl May is in "Vorwärts," this big!" "He got involved with the social democrats to hurt me." "Your pals." "Madame, I would like to point out that I abandoned social democracy." "I changed my ways and went over to the yellow unions, the employers' unions." "Yellow is my colour, not red." "For personal reasons," "I couldn't tolerate being defamed by Karl May for years on end." "I owe it to my political friends to protect myself against this campaign." "German social democracy is using this man as a weapon against me." "That's why I have to prove his guilt." "He must be incapacitated from taking an oath." "Then my enemies at "Vorwärts" and the social democrats will be finished." "That's good news for us." "All that's not going to bring him any new readers." "Let us summarise." "Now he's got everyone against him:" "The Church because he's immoral;" "he uses the name of God to make money, the patriots because he's a pacifist;" "he strengthens Germany's enemies, and finally, the teachers and writers because he's got no style, he writes lies and his background is out of the question." "Rejected by the Church and the nation." "Now he's a "comrade among comrades"" "where he belongs." "Once a weaver, always a weaver." "Mamroth died." "A letter came today from Berta von Suttner." "Give me your heart, I want to carry it to heaven." "And to think, it all began with this Mamroth from the "Frankfurter Zeitung."" "He was a very delightful person, or so they say." " You could've been friends." "As it was, we had to fight each other." "But as my opponent, he forced me to recognise the truth" "and to change my life." "He died with one of your books in his hand." "He understood my work." "He recognised himself in the "Silver Lion."" "Through me, they will all live again in another world." "Tolstoy is dead as well." "Another one who changed his life and, through darkness, wrote to light." "Oh, darling..." ""Let the black horses neigh, the horses of the night."" "Do you remember?" "That was the steed of celestial fantasy, the faithful horse with the scintillating mane." "Or..." ""That is Jasmine, enchanting Jasmine, that is the sacred scent of the asters."" "This is how I imagine Philemon and Baucis." "Get some sleep." "The train for Berlin leaves early and you must concentrate on the case in Charlottenburg." "My mind and soul are strong, but they've broken my body... at last." "Must I go to Berlin?" "Bernstein and Klotz insist." "It's careless to go alone." "The others are bringing three of their five along." "Rudi..." "It's ridiculous!" "Me as a born criminal!" "I've prepared a draft of three to four hours." "They'll be astonished." "Society bears the guilt for the deed of an individual." "For its own sake, society should excuse the individual." "Today our little Hadschi Halif Omar will have to die." "Winnetou also had to die." "Yeah, but it was so long ago." "Back then, my grandmother would take me on her lap:" ""Hush, my boy." "I have found it." - "Where?"" ""Here with me." "It's you." "You are the human soul." "You are lost in wild Ardistan." "But, you will be found."" "I didn't understand it at all at the time because everything was soul for me." "I couldn't see after all." "No figures or forms or colours, no places or distance." "But I could smell people, feel them, hear them." "But a person, or a dog or chair," "I didn't know what they looked like." "I could only make a mental picture of them, and this picture was a soulful picture." "If someone spoke, it was not his body that I heard, but rather his soul." "It wasn't his appearance but rather his soul that attracted me." "And so it still is today even after I learnt to see." "I see beyond objects and bodies, in my stories as well." "For I have remained a child and speak to my readers as a child to a child." "That's the secret of my success." "For a nation's acts do not come from the superficial, but rather from its soul." "Within this soul are the fairy-tales of my grandmother, told as she spun, they tell, born by candlelight, of the fears and dreams of the night." "The finest deeds of a nation have always emerged from its soul." "And however great a writer's imagination is," "he could never force an idea on his people" "that was not already slumbering in its soul." "But beware, when the false prophet comes and arouses the wrong forces," "for these deeds also await the rousing call from the soul of the people to whom I belong" "through my grandmother who knew so much." "Through my father who beat me, and took me to school." "And through my mother, that good woman." "But that's not true!" "Is that all you have to say?" "I demand justice and appeal to you." "Well," "I now impose a fine of 15 marks on Rudolf Lebius." "I have not yet made my plea." "Correct." "Go ahead, please." "That would be Lombroso's theory:" "If a born criminal is born a criminal, then he cannot be anything different from what he was born." "The criminal Karl May is not guilty in the moral sense, and should be thankful that we regard him as the perfect example of a literary fraud." "If the author of pious books turns out to be a thief and robber, the millionaire turns out to be the scandal of cultural history, then the sole reason was an inherited, pathological... pathological defect conditioned by society." "Isn't it easy to understand vanity if one began life as a poor little weaver boy?" "In this respect, I agree with E. Wulffen and his "Psychology of the Criminal." And this man poses as the reporter of the decline of the American Indians." "Of primitive tribes who hampered the progress of civilization." "That's a weaver's morality." "His adventures for kids are like "Punch and Judy." They laugh when he calls," ""Is everybody ready?"" "It follows that according to the psychiatrist Lombroso," "Karl May's nature can be excused from the human point of view, although legally, he must be described as a criminal." "Therefore the court allows Mr Lebius the right to protect the legitimate rights of Mrs Emma Pollmer, formerly Emma May, and in the name of the people, declares him not guilty." "That's the end." "The end of longing and homesickness." "That's for certain." ""The earth was desolate and empty..."" "Karl May." "He always wanted to travel." "He only wrote of horses, Hapag-Lloyd steamboats on the Hamburg-America line, but he always just ended up in the palaces of justice of the German Reich." ""Boston American Express:" ""May collapsed and was placed under the protection of his friends to prevent him from committing suicide, reported, Leb..."" "Lebius." "Don't go easy on me, continue." "I want to know everything." "Please." ""Popular Writer and Convict,"" ""Koblenzer Zeitung."" ""Old Shatterhand Scalped," "Berliner Post."" ""Karl May, A Former Convicted Robber."" ""Die Zeit," Vienna." "I can't stand it, Klara." "I'm not at home." "Go." "He isn't feeling well." "Perhaps you'll take coffee and cake with me?" ""Cairo, 1899." "Photo of Dr. Karl May, known as Kara Ben Nemsi."" "Please, have a cup of coffee." "We didn't mean to intrude." "You're a painter?" "So, you're a painter." "That's a fine profession." "What did you say your name was?" "George Grosz." "George Grosz." "You'll have difficulty with that name with the critics, right from the start, one doesn't like that very much." "Please, take your seat." ""Dear Mrs von Suttner," "It will be two years before the appeal is heard in Berlin." "That was a bitter blow." "All the other cases have been decided in his favour." "Almost 1,000 pages, 400 hundred files against Lebius alone, and then against Father Pöllmann, Krügel," "Fischer, Münchmeyer, in the first round with three hundred pages." "The battles we've had in the last 12 years!" "After that, even one of Napoleon's lovers could learn what it means to fear." "And then to be defeated in a minor skirmish!" "At night I see my beloved dead coming, and I know what that means." "I must give up my beloved." "I hope he lives to see the court case in Berlin." "A query came from Leipzig addressed to Karl May in Radebeul asking if it was possible he committed a murder-robbery, or something." "We were able to produce an alibi." "If he can still speak in Berlin, it'll be a plea on the Day of Judgment." "Every day he sits before his diary as if it were a confessional." "The only thing that interests him is what he will be after his death." "I ask frankly, will it be permitted to cast him back to where he managed to emerge from by such hard work," "back to the darkness of a wicked past, his psychic inferno?" "Nevertheless, he is happy that in his will he is able to provide future German writers, despite their ingratitude, with an old-age pension." "He regards this as redemption for his grandfather, who collapsed in the snow-covered forest" "on Christmas Eve and never brought the bread back to his children" "who waited by the Christmas tree as he died." "Yours truly, Klara May."" "Ladies and gentlemen," "I, President of the Moabit Criminal Court in Berlin, regard Karl May as a writer." "I know what I am talking about." "In a country where 72 percent of all the politicians who determine our lives are lawyers, a man like this is conspicuous." "We all dream of travelling in our innermost hearts." "This path full of secrets leads inward." "The outer world is only a shadow world, and the soul is a vast land into which we flee." "A Münchhausen for the proletariat." "A dream factory." "Opium for the people." "And this infamous Karl May, this printer, is a witness for social democracy in Germany." "That's..." "Are you an Indian?" "And do you come from the Sarrasani Circus?" "Are you a native North American from a tribe which calls itself Mohawk?" "And you have never heard of a man named Winnetou?" "Do you know any books in Indian dialect which Mr May claims to have read?" "That's all I wanted to know." "As you can see, Karl May is the archetype of the Captain of Köpenick." "He probably learned a lot from him." "Mr Lebius, you are speaking out of turn." "Allow me to prove that Karl May, as an erotomaniac, is unfit for young people and is no artist but rather a sexual criminal." "Two quotes from his earlier books which have now been re-released under his name for the first time." "I object." "The successors of Münchmeyer Publishers have themselves admitted that these books have no connection at all with Karl May." "But they recently appeared under Karl May's name and with Karl May's approval." "Objection overruled." "With forged documents which Mr May had smuggled into Münchmeyer Publishers by Mr Fisher, rest his soul," "Mr May tried to obtain a fee of 300,000 marks, by fraud." "I have the letters from Fischer at my home." "I quote," ""She threw herself upon him with the full force of her heavy body." "She clutched him with all the strength of her supple limbs." "He defended himself." "She did not heed that in her struggle her corset was torn and her skirt ripped on the corner of the table, so that now she lay on him" "almost naked."" "There you have it." "Mr President, I must draw your attention to my client's latest works and to their high respect for human dignity." "We'll come to that." " May I continue?" "As proof of the literary criminality, just one more quote:" ""Baroness St. Marie bathes in sensually lit rooms decorated with obscene pictures, in milk." "She compares herself with the pictures on the wall and whispers:" "If I were a man," "I'd fall in love with myself." "No other like myself who would be prepared to satisfy even the most outrageous desires."" "End of quote." "And armed with this ulcer, this canker, he undermined the morals of German Catholics." "I again draw your attention to the moral self-purification, the lofty standard of his late works:" "The good, the maturity, the peaceful insight into the soul of mankind." "This man was constantly in search of love and recognition." "He was tormented early by the loss of his mother's love and by imprisonment, as his latest books prove." "But nobody reads them." "Nobody buys the new books, or didn't you know?" "You must face the fact that you'll lose here." "Ridiculous old symbolism." " Get to the point." "Even the colportage books were better." "Mr May is a born criminal." "He is not capable of thinking like a normal person, of telling the truth." "He commits his crimes as though under compulsion... and tells lies." "He has a few dependent witnesses who reveal everything." "Like Mr Dittrich, for instance." "He saw to it that his former wife," "Emma Pollmer, had her allowance stopped because she gave evidence against him, but immediately started paying again when she retracted." "Then he informed the social democrats that I was a blackmailer." "Whereupon, in order to protect myself, I revealed him as a born criminal to discredit him..." " I forbid you to speak." "...then he officially denounced me as a rascal." "And if this goes on..." " I forbid you to speak!" "As a settlement is impossible and all the other proceedings depend upon the outcome of this trifling case," "I now declare that Lebius did not act in the interest of Mrs Emma Pollmer." "Instead, he abused her plight and her character in order to deliberately procure useful information for his extortion and threats." "Because of the serious nature of the slanders, namely calling Karl May a born criminal," "I sentence Mr Lebius, herewith annulling the 2nd Charlottenburg verdict, too a fine of 100 marks, or 20 days imprisonment." "For I regard Karl May as a great writer, one of the last great German mystics, at a time when fairy-tales are disappearing." "I hereby end this trial." "And if I may, I'll make a private observation." "At the end of your troubles, Mr May, an end which I hope I played a small part in," "I believe you are the creator of the only real heroic songs of the Wilhelminian age." "...and Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi Halif." "...and Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi Halif." "Later these will have to be shortened or changed." "Don't you think?" "Pardon me..." "later..." "I have just met an interesting young man." "He knows your work." "He loves you and he wants to help you." "He will take notes on everything and will later found his own publishing house, a Karl May publishing house, a Bayreuth in Radebeul." "You want to become my publisher?" "It's very interesting that we meet today of all days." "If they only knew that the Apaches were in reality Stone Age people." "They were child-murderers, desert-walkers, and were clubbed to death by everyone like animals... for bounty." "And how they produced our Winnetou..." "Karl May, the creator of our invincible Old Shatterhand, in Vienna!" "Here with us before a crowd of 3,000." "What an asshole..." " May I?" "That I lived to see it!" "In the enthusiasm of the masses." "Karl May, Vienna, 3,000 people!" " Go and see the bum, and leave me in peace." "The lack of weapons for freedom must be made up for by determination!" "May, the little man who never left Saxony, and who wrote all his books in prison." "Everything created out of nothing, only imagination." "A whole world!" "Another world." "Karl Kraus is there, and Trakl," "Bertold Veirtl, and from Lübeck, Heinrich Mann." "Have you seen the people?" "Splendid source of manpower, but mediocre." "No families." "3,000 petit bourgeois, proletarians, schoolchildren," "small business clerks, suburbanites." "There's tremendous unrest." "But with Hölderlin in our knapsacks and Karl May in our heads, we'll win any war." "And now he's got his church, probably be rather kitschy." "As for war," "I'll say this:" "Blood is war in liquid form." "What's so... fascinating about war is its bloodiness." "Anything else is just this typical infantile senility as with Tolstoy, for instance." "These visionaries are completely non-political people." "They can't understand that a dirty but gigantic digestive process is the healthiest preparation for producing a sensitive and functioning brain." "And here of all places, where Frank Wedekind once spoke and Alban Berg and Schönberg played, comes this Old Shatterhand from Saxony." "It's good for the ticket office." "Suttner will get a surprise," "Baroness Bertha von Suttner." "The country and the people are in a ferment." "There are tremors in the water." "It crackles." "I don't like the look on their faces." "I'm not wrong." "There's something in the air, something poisonous." "Hatred, deep-seated hatred." "Behind all the candlelight, and at the back of it all, fear." "They smell power, feel themselves attracted by it." "Feel themselves attracted by it;" "they would like best to be dragged along in its wake." "Another year may pass by, but then it will be necessary for them to make war." "And then, I feel it, great changes will come, dreadful changes." "God Mammon's rule will be more radical than ever, but it will be called a better quality of life and progress." "Ladies and Gentlemen..." "Yes, that's Karl May!" "A good German, a victorious German, a beloved German." "One who is received by Their Imperial Highnesses as a "western man of the pen,"" "as an adventurer of the heart from Germany." "You must take more care of yourself, Mr May." "You want to be in your best form for your audience with His Imperial Highness." "We need men of intellect, of science and the arts." "And you don't find them in Wagram and not in Waterloo." "Our battles will not be won by heroes but by good boots and devilish chemical concoctions, by starvation and fever, by well-organized transport by gigantic loans, and other very mundane things that have nothing to do with manliness." "You have achieved a great deal, His Imperial Highness will receive you." "You are loved." "Kara Ben Nemsi is loved." "Old Shatterhand is loved and so is Karl May:" "The adventurer, the adventurer of the soul." "How do you know that?" " The adventurer of the soul is your drama." "Perhaps even the tragedy of the world." "The eternally searching, eternally wandering, unloved man." "You have tried to solve the problem in your books." "And you've made a will to secure the financial future of old writers" "And you've made a will to secure the financial future of old writers and young teachers as long as your books are read." "That is the last will and testament of Karl May." "He will die old, and after a full life." "A happy man." "Isn't today your wedding day, sweetheart?" "Our wedding day," "Karl, sweetheart." "And they laugh when you write figuratively of the ghost smithy." "Of heaven and hell." "And Ardistan and Djinnistan." "And of the lakes of tears, whose awesome landscape you have overcome today." "You were at the limits of human endurance." "You were in the Rocky Mountains where only few have been:" "On the spiritual heights." "Now you are home." "Now I've returned home." "At last." "To the happy hunting grounds." "Victory." "A great victory." "A victory for light." "Rose..." "Rose-red." "Most of all" "I would've liked to say to him:" "Mr May, admit it." "Let's not kid ourselves." "In spite of all the lawsuits you've won, you will be the writer who never left Saxony" "and who wrote his books in prison." "And even if none of this ever happened... you would've needed it" "to save your soul." "I remained in the background, provided him with his artificial hells" "out of which he could fashion his paradises." "A wonderful deal." "Unfortunately I never actually saw him." "I was once at the garden gate when he came." "But I didn't want to disturb him." "Two days after his death on Good Friday 1912," "I wrote a poem about him." ""In the storms of spring you lie quietly under a bed of flowers" "laughing at life's showers." "I will not disturb you, no, but from afar" "share in your friend's mourning." "You hurt me and often misjudged me;" "but I can forgive and forget, even for ever." "Your keen eye failed you on this one occasion;" "you never recognised the real me." "I always opposed you out of pure duty," "for all your litigation was morbid and misplaced." "But secretly my heart beat a hundredfold on your behalf." "Au revoir till we meet in heaven's glades."" "In the land of Saxony there was a man named" "SUBTITLES:" "TITELWERK SUPERVISION:" "ANNIE GROSSJOHANN"