Hitler's Favorite Author, Karl May on This Day in History

This Day in History: Karl May was born on this day in 1842. May was a German writer best known for his adventure novels set in the American Old West. His main protagonist was Winnetou the Apache chief. He was a big deal in his time, selling 200 million copies of his books, and he was a favorite of Hitler and Einstein. Though his novels were set in the Wild West, Karl May never actually went to America. One German writer calls him "an impostor, a liar and a thief -- and one of Germany's most widely read authors. He embellished his own biography with as much fantasy as the scenarios in his adventure novels, and when the deceit was finally exposed, he never recovered. But his legend lives on." Perhaps that's too harsh an assessment as that describes many writers. 

Karl May's works did provide a way of escaping a dark time in European history. "May provided Germans with a fantasy world to inhabit when ordinary people didn't travel. Later, when communism gripped large parts of Europe, his novels gave a sense of the world that was out of bounds to his captive audience, who hung on his words in a similar fashion to how downtrodden readers of another era must have lapped up their Dickens." Source

See also: Buffalo Bill & the American Wild West, 200 Books on DVDrom
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2015/09/buffalo-bill-american-wild-west-200.html

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