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My Life and My Efforts, Volume I
[Mein Leben und Streben, Band I]

Autobiography by Karl May (1842-1912)

Translated by Gunther Olesch in 2000 from the 1st edition of 1910

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Translator's Introduction

Karl May, born in 1842 under the name Carl Friedrich May,
published the first volume of his autobiography in November of
1910. He never found the time to write the planned second volume
or any of the other future works he is referring to in this book
before he died in 1912.

Rudolf Lebius felt insulted by what Karl May had to say about him
in his autobiography, and, less than one month after the sale of
this book had started, Lebius succeeded in obtaining an injunction
against it, so that it had to be taken out of the shops, and all
remaining copies had to be destroyed. Rudolf Lebius is portrayed
by Karl May as a villain of the worst kind, a man who changes his
political loyalties for money and specialises in blackmailing
people, after digging up dirt from their past, in order to control
and use them and, most of all, in order to extort money. It is a
fact that Lebius had been asking Karl May to "loan" him money, and
when Karl May refused to pay, Lebius started publishing ever more
aggressive articles against May in a newspaper he owned, full of
exaggerated and partially false accusations. Lebius had been
working for several newspapers with different political
backgrounds before joining the social democratic party and writing
for their newspapers. After founding his own newspaper, he left
the party and changed his political views into the very opposite.
Lebius then focused on anti-Semitic propaganda, and, after the
first world war, he even led an anti-Semitic party for a few
years. He died in 1946.

Thus, the first edition of Karl May's autobiography could only
reach a few hundred people, probably mostly among German speaking
readers outside of Germany, e.g. in Austria, where the injunction
of the German court did not apply. About three month prior to
his death, Karl May wrote to his publisher: "Concerning `My Life
and My Efforts' I am willing to do your bidding. I will tackle
it." Whether Karl May rewrote some parts of his autobiography, is
uncertain, but very soon after his death, his publisher announced
that an abridged version would soon be available. Four month
after Karl May's death, this abridged version was published. It
did not just omit the passages about Rudolf Lebius, but much more,
and it even added texts taken from other autobiographical writings
by Karl May. This adaptation is credited to Karl May's widow and
E.A. Schmid (1884-1951). Little more than a month had passed
before someone else, the lawyer Oskar Gerlach, felt insulted by
this version and obtained an injunction against its publication.
The publisher reacted by printing new, mostly blank, versions of
those two pages Gerlach had objected against, instructing
booksellers to rip out the offending pages and to glue the new
ones in. In December of 1912, the lawsuit was settled, and the
remaining copies of the adaptation could be sold with all of its
pages, but a new edition would have to be changed. This third,
further abridged edition was published in 1914 by E.A. Schmid. In
early 1917, a 34th volume was added to the series of Karl May's
collected works, of which 33 volumes had been published in the
author's lifetime. This 34th volume is titled "Ich" . It
contains another abridged version of the autobiography as well as
a few other texts, mostly about, but not by, Karl May. By 1995,
this book had gone through 39 editions, in which the text of the
autobiography had again been revised several times, though the
later revisions aimed at a partial restoration of the original
text. The compilation of other texts contained in this volume
also differs in the various editions. Even the edition of 1995
still omits a large passage (at least 36 pages in the first
edition) about Rudolf Lebius. It also moves two passages which
had been omitted from the seventh chapter in previous editions to
an appendix. In the first one of these passages, Karl May writes
about his views on plagiarism.

Though, Karl May insists on being truthful in this book, one
should not approach it without scepticism. It is particularly
hard to believe that all of his repeated deceptions, assuring his
readers that his fictional adventure stories were based on fact,
were all just designed to set the scene for some great work, he
was all the time planning to write at some later point in his
life. Probably, his mind just sought a way to escape his
unpleasant past and his present problems with his failing marriage
to his first wife by retreating into the fictional persona of the
protagonist of his novels.

Furthermore, there are many details where May's memory might have
proven slightly unreliable or which he might intentionally or
subconsciously try to conceal. For instance, his description of
the events due to which he was thrown out of the boarding school
completely contradicts the version found in the school's files.
He writes that before Christmas he had to clean the candlesticks
and kept the tallow he scratched off of them, to make small
candles from it, to be used as Christmas decorations. He was
watched by a fellow student, who reported this theft of what Karl
May regarded as garbage to the principal. According to the
school's files, it happened like this: In November, Karl May had
to clean the candlesticks and to replace the burnt down candles.
Two weeks later, two older students found six complete candles in
his unlocked suitcase. They turned them over to the student who
was in charge of the candles for that week, but agreed not to tell
the teachers. Shortly before Christmas, accusations are made
that, at two occasions, money had been stolen. The students who
had found the candles came forward and were reprimanded by the
teachers for having covered the matter up before. The question of
the stolen money was never resolved.

Also, everything Karl May tells us about the life of his father's
mother before he was even born is very questionable. It would
seem that this grandmother was not just a gifted stroy-teller, but
might also have invented a more romantic past for herself, which
she then passed off as the truth to her family, just as Karl May
later also pretended that his fictional novels were true. Karl
May writes that this grandmother lost her mother at an early age.
She fell in love with his grandfather, but felt obliged to devote
all of her energy to taking care of her ailing father. Thus, she
kept her faithful lover waiting until her father had died. After
giving birth to two children, she lost her husband in a tragic and
rather dramatic accident at Christmas. After some hard times, she
found a job as a housekeeper, had a near-death experience, lost
her job, and married a poor weaver by the name of Vogel, who also
died shorty afterwards. Some aspects of this story plainly
contradict the few facts from her life which could be pieced
together from old church documents. These facts are: On May the
1st, 1803, she married C.F. May, while both of her parents were
still alive. Five months later, their daughter was born. In
1810, her son Heinrich, Karl May's father, was born. The records
of his baptism state that Heinrich's father was not his mother's
husband. He was baptised under his mother's maiden name. On
February the 4th, 1818, C.F. May died due to a "disorderly way of
life" (whatever this is supposed to mean). In 1820, the mother of
Karl May's grandmother died. In 1822, she married C.T. Vogel. In
1825, her father died. In 1826, C.T. Vogel died. Later in the
same year, a church document lists her son Heinrich with the
surname May.

There are indications that Karl May was not just aware of the fact
that some things he wrote about his grandmother were not literally
true, but that he had also invented some of it himself. The most
striking indication of this is an old book of oriental myths,
entitled "Der Hakawati", which May claims had belonged to his
grandmother. He claims that the fable of Sitara, which he tells
us in the beginning of his autobiography, had been contained in
this book. It seems that neither such a book nor the author
Christianus Kretzschmann ever existed. The author's name is
strangely similar to May's grandmother's maiden name J. Christiane
Kretzschmar. The fable of Sitara seems to be Karl May's own
creation. In the end of the fifth chapter, he mentions another
book, which he claims he had received from a man who had a great
impact on his life while he was in prison. This book also never
really existed. Apparently, these books are only meant to serve
as symbols for abstract concepts and ideas which he got to know
through the persons concerned. Thus, not just Karl May's novels,
but also his autobiography, would have to be interpreted in a
somewhat allegorical way, not necessarily representing literally
true facts, but rather symbolising a spiritual truth.

Karl May's grandmother is of particular interest, because he
writes that she had inspired the character of the princess Marah
Durimeh, whom May regarded as the female counterpart in the Orient
to the Indian chief Winnetou in America. Winnetou is the title
character of Karl May's most famous novel and also appears in
several others of his books. But Karl May never wrote the planned
novel about Marah Durimeh, which he had intended to cover three or
four volumes, just like "Winnetou". Thus, Marah Durimeh only
plays a comparatively smaller role in his existing novels and we
can only guess how he planned to develop this character into the
central character of his later, unwritten works.

Though the fifth chapter, relating the darkest part of Karl May's
life, is the longest in the book, it still skips many things,
which the author obviously does not want to remember. Thus, the
question which crimes he had actually committed remains largely
unanswered. He also does not tell us anything about the journeys
he claims to have taken in those days, promising to disclose this
in the second volume, which he never wrote. The rumours he
fostered that he had already in this early part of his life
travelled to the Orient and to America are definitely not true;
he probably never left Germany at this time. Only in his later
years, he took a long trip to the Orient and Asia (1899-1900) and
a trip to America (1908).

As far as the lawsuits and the events which led up to them are
concerned, Karl May, of course, cannot be expected to relate them
in an objective manner. After he had resigned his job at H.G.
Muenchmeyer's publishing company in 1877, he wrote for other
publishers and got married in 1880. From 1882 on, we find him
working for Muenchmeyer again, writing those novels which were to
become the reason for his first lawsuit. According to Karl May,
Muenchmeyer was on the verge of bankruptcy and begged May to save
him with his gift for writing bestselling novels. But the truth
might have been rather different. Karl May admits himself that
the other publisher, he had mainly been working for, did not pay
him much: "The royalties I received from Pustet were (...) so
insignificant that I cannot bring myself to naming the amount."
Having to support a wife, one can easily imagine that May was the
one who was in need of some cash. Furthermore, I have read
elsewhere that Muenchmeyer had payed May an advance of 500 marks,
a fact which May fails to mention in his autobiography.

And then there are Karl May's allegations that Muenchmeyer, or
rather one of employees, had spiced up those novels with indecent
passages. Though it is likely that some abridgment had taken
place, the claim that those novels were completely rewritten from
morally impeccable stories into immoral trash are surely an
exaggeration. For almost twenty years after their original
publication, nobody seemed to be offended by these so-called
"indecent novels". Only after Muenchmeyer's widow had sold the
rights to these novels, which she did not even own, and was
therefore sued by Karl May, articles started appearing in the
newspapers denouncing theses novels as highly immoral. These
articles were not just designed to destroy Karl May's reputation
and thereby ruin his chances in the pending lawsuits, they also
increased the demand for the illegally printed copies of these
novels. Perhaps, Karl May saw no other way to escape this trap
than to pretend that his novels had been altered, and perhaps, his
memory of them had also changed, regarding them as closer to his
later works than they really were. At any rate, a proof, one way
or the other, would be impossible. The original manuscripts had
been destroyed, and those who allegedly rewrote these novels were
already dead when the lawsuit started.

After Karl May's death, E.A. Schmid obtained the rights to all of
his works. He believed in the myth that Karl May's novels had
been thoroughly rewritten without the author's consent and made
sure that the original versions were no longer published. He then
created what he regarded as "improved" versions of all of Karl
May's works. Especially the disputed novels, originally published
by Muenchmeyer, were rewritten rather dramatically; large parts of
the plot were removed and new solutions to certain mysteries were
invented; characters from Karl May's more popular novels were
added; etc. Generations of readers have known Karl May only
through Schmid's adaptations. After Karl May's works had entered
the public domain, a few editions presenting the original texts
have been published, but the vast majority of all books sold in
Germany under the name of Karl May still contains the adaptations
by Schmid et al.

I have read that Karl May was the most frequently translated
German author of all times, but unfortunately this does not apply
to the English language. Though even the Encyclopaedia Britannica
describes him as "one of the world's all-time fiction
best-sellers", he is virtually unknown by most English speaking
readers. The earliest English translation of one of his works
came in 1886, probably in the form of a weekly series of booklets
under the title "Rosita" (a translation of "Das Waldroeschen", the
first one of those disputed novels Karl May had written for
H.G. Muenchmeyer under a pseudonym). I suppose, these booklets
were just as quickly discarded and forgotten as they were printed.
In 1898, two books entitled "Winnetou, the Apache knight" and "The
Treasure of Nugget Mountain" were published, containing a severely
abridged and altered translation by Marion Ames Taggart of Karl
May's most famous novel "Winnetou". Among other things, the main
character is changed from a German, implicitly a Protestant, into
an American, whom the translator has named Jack Hildreth and who
keeps on emphasising that he was a Catholic. In one place, the
translator has even added a line in which the hero is made to
point out that the religion of the murderer Rattler was not his
own, but that of a non-Catholic, when Winnetou suggests to him
that he had the same religion as the murderer. In the original
book, the hero simply answers "Yes" and then goes on to explain,
as he also does in the translation, that the murderer did not keep
the commandments. These liberties of the translation are
particular serious since Karl May often had to defend himself
against allegations of promoting Catholicism, though being a
Protestant, just because he published many of his stories in a
Catholic magazine. In 1900, the series of translations by M.A.
Taggart was continued with "Jack Hildreth on the Nile", based on
Karl May's "Der Mahdi" a.k.a. "Im Lande des Mahdi". You can find
these three books on the Internet at:
http://karlmay.uni-bielefeld.de/kmg/sprachen/englisch/primlit/index.htm

In 1955, a translation of the beginning of Karl May's big oriental
adventure by M.A. de Becker and C.A. Willoughby has been published
under the title "In the Desert". I have neither read this, nor
any other later translations, but I have read about this
translation that it had a tendency to simplify, shorten, and
paraphrase the text. It is also peculiar that someone would only
translate the first volume of a novel in six volumes. Thus, the
reader would witness the hero finding the body of Paul Galingre in
the desert and starting on his pursuit of the killers, but he
would never solve the mystery and discover the criminal mastermind
behind all of it in the end of the last volume. In 1971, two
volumes of short stories entitled "Canada Bill" and "Captain
Cayman", translated by Fred Gardner, have been published in
London. These sold only about 3000 copies each. In 1977, a
series of translations by Michael Shaw was published. It included
"Ardistan and Djinnistan" (2 volumes), "Winnetou" (2 volumes), and
"In the Desert" (1 volume). These translations have been
described as faithful to the original. In 1979, the series was
continued with 4 books, entitled "The Caravan of Death", "The
Secret Brotherhood", "The Evil Saint", and "The Black Persian",
continuing the oriental adventure which had started with "In the
Desert". Only between 3000 and 4500 copies were sold per volume.
In 1980, some of these books were reprinted as pocketbooks, but
less than half of the printed books were actually sold, which put
an end to all plans for further English translations. (By the
way, the German original of "Winnetou" had sold about three
million copies in the edition as volumes 7 to 9 of "Karl May's
collected works" alone, when I bought it many years ago.) In
1998, there seems to have been a new edition of Michael Shaw's
translation of "Winnetou", and in 1999, David Koblick published
his abridged translation of the first volume of "Winnetou".

In this first (and only) volume of his autobiography, Karl May
describes his life until about 1887/88 and then turns to the
current events of 1910, when he had to defend himself against
various slanderous accusations, touching only upon those events
from the meantime which are somehow connected with these lawsuits.
In the time from 1887 to 1899, he wrote most of those novels which
have been the foundation of his lasting popularity. In 1899/1900,
he went on his long journey through the Orient and, in 1908, he
visited America. In the unwritten second volume of his
autobiography, Karl May had planned to discuss those novels and
his travels in detail. Here, I only want to give a short list of
his work and a few events in his life after 1887:

1887: Karl May publishes "Der Sohn des Baerenjaegers" the Bear-Hunter> in a magazine for boys, published by Wilhelm
Spemann. In the course of the following years, he off and on
publishes several stories there, which are later collected in
seven books. This gets him the reputation of being mainly an
author for children, against which he vigorously protests in this
autobiography. Nevertheless, these stories, mainly set in the
Wild West, still rank among his most popular works.

1888: May finishes his big oriental adventure novel, which he had
already started publishing in a magazine called "Deutscher
Hausschatz" in 1881. For eight years (with interruptions), the
readers of this magazine had been able, to follow the adventures
of the first person narrator, whom many readers identified with
the author, regarding the imaginative story as a factual account.
On September the 6th, Karl May's father dies.
In early October, he moves from Dresden to one of its suburbs,
called Koetzschenbroda.

1889: Karl May meets Richard Ploehn and his wife Klara. They
become his closest friends.
In October, the "Hausschatz" starts publishing Karl May's novel
"El Sendador".

1890: Karl May can no longer afford to pay the rent on his large
house in Koetzschenbroda. He moves to Niederloessnitz.

1891: Karl May moves to Oberloessnitz.
In October, the magazine's publication of "El Sendador" ends, and
"Der Mahdi" starts.
F.E. Fehsenfeld becomes May's publisher. This marks the beginning
of a series of 33 books, called "gesammelte Reiseerzaehlungen"
, which are regarded as his most
important works.

1892: On April the 6th, H.G. Muenchmeyer dies.
The first six volumes of the "collected traveller's tales",
containing the big oriental adventure, are published, with one
additional chapter in the end of the sixth volume, which was
previously unpublished.

1893: Karl May and his wife take a trip to the Black Forest.
Afterwards, they visit F.E. Fehsenfeld and his wife, and together
they travel to Switzerland. The trip only worsens the
deteriorating relationship of Karl and Emma May.
"Winnetou", Karl May's most famous novel, is published as volumes
7 to 9 of his "collected traveller's tales". While the first one
of these three volumes was written entirely from scratch by Karl
May, only reusing very few ideas from earlier stories, volumes two
and three mainly recycle material, which he had previously
published as individual stories.
Volumes 10 and 11, published by Fehsenfeld, present collections of
earlier stories with a few new passages to tie them together.
In September, the publication of "Der Mahdi" in the "Hausschatz"
ends and "Satan und Ischariot" starts (though this title is not
used by the magazine).

1894: Karl May's health is suffering. Together with his wife, he
visits a health resort in the Harz Mountains.
"El Sendador" is published as volumes 12 and 13 of Karl May's
"traveller's tales", with only minor changes, but under new
titles. Volume 14 contains the first volume of a new western
novel, entitled "Old Surehand".
Karl May rejects an offer by Pauline Muenchmeyer, the widow of
H.G. Muenchmeyer, to write a new novel for her.

1895: Volume 15 is published as the second volume of "Old
Surehand", but it does not really continue the story of the first
volume, but rather interrupts it with a series of flashbacks to
earlier stories, in which the title character does not even occur.
In editions published after Karl May's death, these stories have
been removed, so that "Old Surehand" no longer covers three, but
only two volumes. Most of the contents of the original second
volume was then adapted into an additional volume entitled
"Kapitaen Kaiman".
[The English translations published in 1971 under the titles
"Canada Bill" and "Captain Cayman" are based on these stories
which Karl May originally incorporated into the second volume of
"Old Surehand".]
Karl May is visited by Ferdinand Pfefferkorn and his wife. Karl
May had gone to school with Pfefferkorn, who had since then
emigrated to Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Pfefferkorns conduct
spiritualistic seances with the Mays and probably also the
Ploehns.
On December the 30th, Karl May buys a house in Radebeul, which he
names "Villa Shatterhand" after his alter-ego "Old Shatterhand"
from his western novels. Here, he spends the rest of his life.
Nowadays, the house continues to be preserved as a museum.

1896: Karl May further fosters the myth that his fictional
adventures were based on facts by commissioning a gunsmith to make
three customised rifles for him, which he then passes off as the
"actual" weapons used by the two main characters from his novel
"Winnetou". He also has himself photographed, dressed in
appropriate costumes, as the main character from his adventure
stories.
"Der Mahdi" is published under the title "Im Lande des Mahdi" the Land of the Mahdi> as volumes 16 to 18 of Karl May's
"collected traveller's tales". Originally the story consisted of
two parts, which were both too large to fit into one volume each.
Karl May shortened the first part and extended the second part to
fill two volumes. Thus, most of the third volume presents new
material, not included in the magazine's version. Volume 19
contains the third volume of "Old Surehand", not published before
and finishing the story which had begun in the first volume.

1897: "Satan und Ischariot" is published as volumes 20 to 22 of
the "traveller's tales". In adapting the novel for this edition
(in the year before), Karl May had realised that Heinrich Keiter,
the editor of the "Hausschatz" magazine, had almost entirely
removed a rather long chapter from the novel. May demanded that
his original manuscript should be returned to him, but only those
pages of the lost chapter which had been ignored in their
entirety, as well as most of the last third of the novel, had
survived. But still, in spite of all this, he did not completely
restore the novel for the edition published by Fehsenfeld.
Instead, on about six printed pages, he only gives a summary of
the lost chapter, which otherwise would have covered approximately
200 pages. After Keiter's promise that this would never happen
again, Karl May writes the beginning of "Im Reiche des silbernen
Loewen" for the magazine, but
discontinues his work on account of a new controversy. For the
next ten years, Karl May publishes no further novels in this
magazine.
Karl May and his wife travel through a large part of Germany,
Austria, and Bohemia.
Volume 23 of the "collected traveller's tales" presents a
collection of earlier short stories, and volume 24 contains a new
novel, called "Weihnacht!" .

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