Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Karl May’s masculine, aggressive literary/theatrical vision of the “wild west” has enduringly influenced German perceptions of U.S. cultural identify, foreign policy, and landscape. German author Karl May (1842-1912) never visited American but wrote 18 adventure novels featuring a friendship between a German immigrant, “Old Shatterhand,” and his Apache blood-brother Winnetou, who fight for justice in the Oregon Trail territory. Over 100 years later, May’s novels and subsequent performance adaptations still frame the way many Germans contextualize the U.S as a romanticized land rife with gun-toting, culturally naïve, and fiercely independent cowboys. His work is memorialized at an annual outdoor production in Bad Segeberg based on the Winnetou saga. The productions, staged in an open-air theatre that accommodates 14,000 spectators, have drawn hundreds of thousands of viewers every year for the past 70 years. Given the ever-shifting international German/US relationship, exploring May’s framing of American identity proves interesting and timely.