Books: My Life and My Efforts

K >> Karl May >> My Life and My Efforts

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[a] "Erbsuende": the German expression for "original sin"
suggests rather a meaning of "inherited sin". Actually, the
idea of Adam's original sin being inherited by every human
being at birth is rather common among Catholics and
Protestants (but is rejected by Orthodox Christians). I have
been told that this belief is based on a misinterpretation of
Romans 5:12 by St. Augustine, who interpreted the words for
"sin" and "death" as synonymous in this verse: "as by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men".

Entirely unexpectedly, mother had inherited a house as well as a
few small, linen money-pouches from a distant relative. One of
these money-pouches contained lots of two-pfennig-pieces, another
one lots of tree-pfennig-pieces, and a third one lots of
groschen [a]. A fourth one contained three score of
fifty-pfennig-pieces, and in the fifth and last pouch, ten old
pieces of six from Schaffhausen, ten eight-groschen-pieces, five
gulden [b], and four taler [c] were found. This was really a
fortune! In our poverty, it seemed almost like a million!
Granted, the house was just as wide as three small windows and
largely built of wood, but on the other hand, it was three storeys
high and had on the very top, right under the ridge of the roof, a
pigeonry, which is, of course, not so commonly found.
Grandmother, my father's mother, moved into the ground floor,
which only consisted of one room with two windows and the
entrance. Behind the room was a chamber with an old mangle, which
was rented to other people at two pfennig per hour. There were
happy Saturdays, when this mangle earned us ten, twelve, yes even
fourteen pfennig. This increased our standard of living quite
extensively. On the first floor, the parents lived with us.
There stood the loom with its reel. On the second floor, we slept
with a colony of mice and some larger rodents, who usually lived
in the pigeonry and only visited us at night. There also was a
cellar, but it was always empty. Once, it held a few bags of
potatoes, but they did not belong to us, but rather to a
neighbour, who did not have his own cellar. Grandmother remarked
that it would be much better, if the cellar belonged to him and
the potatoes to us. The yard was just big enough for us five
children to stand in it without crowding each other. It adjoined
the garden, which contained an elder-bush, an apple-tree, and a
plum-tree, as well as small pond, which we called our "lake". The
elder-bush supplied us with the tea, we drank in order to get into
a sweat, whenever we had caught a cold. But it did not last very
long, because as soon as one of us children had caught a cold, all
others started coughing as well and wanted to sweat along. The
apple-tree always blossomed very beautifully and amply. But since
we knew just too well that apples taste best right after the
blossoms were gone, all apples were usually harvested as early as
the beginning of June. The plums, on the other hand, were taboo
to us. Grandmother enjoyed them far too much. They were counted
daily, and nobody dared to touch them. Nevertheless, we children
got more, much more of them, than what was our rightful share. As
far as the "lake" is concerned, it was full of life, but
unfortunately not with fish, but with frogs. We knew all of them
individually, even by their voices. There were always between ten
and fifteen of them. We fed them with earth-worms, flies,
beetles, and all kinds of other nice things we could not enjoy
ourselves for gastronomic or aesthetic reasons, and they always
responded very gratefully. They knew us. They left the water,
whenever we approached them. Some even allowed us to hold and pet
them. But the full measure of their gratitude could be heard at
night, when we were falling asleep. No dairymaid could enjoy her
zither more, then we enjoyed our frogs. We knew precisely, which
one it was, making his noise, whether it was Arthur, Paul, or
Fritz, and when they even began to sing in a duet or in a chorus,
we jumped out of our beds, opened the windows, to join the
croaking, until mother or grandmother came and put us back where
we belonged. Unfortunately, one day, a so-called
district-physician came to our small town, to conduct a so-called
health-survey. Everywhere, he found something objectionable.
This equally weird and callous man clapped his hands over his
head, as soon as he saw our garden and our beautiful pond, and
declared that his cesspool of pestilence and cholera had to
disappear at once. The next day, the policeman Eberhardt brought
a note from the town's Judge Layritz, stating that within three
days the pond had to be filled in and the population of frogs had
to be killed, otherwise a fine of fifteen "good groschen" [d] had
to be payed. We children were outraged. To murder our frogs!
Well, if Judge Layritz had been a frog, then we would have done it
with pleasure! We discussed the matter, and as we decided, so it
was carried out. The water was scooped from the pond, until we
could catch the frogs. They were put into the large basked, which
had a lid, and carried to the large pond of the coal-pit behind
the rifle-house, grandmother marching ahead, we followed. There,
every frog was individually taken from the basket, lovingly
petted, and put into the water. How many sighs could be heard,
how many tears were shed, and how many condemning judgements were
passed on that so-called district-physician, I can no longer say
with certainty now, after more than sixty years have passed. But
I still know quite definitely that grandmother assured us, to put
an end to our immense sorrow, every one of us would, after
precisely ten years had passed, inherit a three times larger house
with a garden, five times as large, which would contain a ten
times larger lake with twenty times larger frogs. This brought an
equally sudden and pleasant change to our disposition.
Cheerfully, we marched home with grandmother and the empty basket.

[a] Groschen: a coin worth 10 pfennig.
[b] Gulden, a.k.a. guilder: a coin worth 20 groschen.
[c] Taler (outdated spelling: Thaler), a.k.a. dollar: a coin
worth 30 groschen. (The American currency was named after
this coin.)
[d] "Guter Groschen" (good groschen): an older type of groschen,
worth slightly more (1.25) than the Neugroschen
(new-groschen).

This happened at a time, when I was no longer blind and was
already able to walk. I was neither born blind, nor was I
inflicted with some kind of an inherited physical defect. Father
and mother were indeed vigorous and healthy by nature. They have
never been sick throughout their lives. To accuse me of atavistic
frailties is an act of malice, I have to reject most decisively.
That I fell seriously ill shortly after my birth, lost my
eyesight, and was ailing for entire four years, was not the
consequence of inheritance, but rather only due to the local
conditions, the poverty, ignorance, and harmful quackery, the
victim of which I became. As soon as I came into the hands of a
capable physician, my eyesight returned, and I became a most sound
and robust boy, who was strong enough to take on any other boy.
But, before I talk about myself, I have to devote some more time
to the surroundings, in which I have spent my earliest childhood.

Along with the house, mother had also inherited the debts,
associated with it. Interests had to be paid on them. Therefore,
all we got out of it was that we had to pay interests instead of
rent. Mother was economical, and father was so too in his own
way. But just as he was excessive in everything, in his love, his
rage, his work, his praise, his reprimand, so he was here as well
in is assessment of that small inheritance, which could only be an
incentive to continue saving money and to remove the debt from the
house. But though he did not take to the belief he had suddenly
become rich, he nonetheless presumed he could adopt a different
lifestyle, now. He stopped spending his entire life toiling at
the loom. After all, he had a house now, and he had money, lots
of money. He could turn to something else, which was less
strenuous, more worth while than weaving. While lying in his bed,
being unable to sleep, and thinking about what he should do, he
heard the rats rumbling upstairs in the empty pigeonry. This
rumble was repeated day by day, and so, in that manner well known
to any psychologist, the decision ripened in him, to drive out the
rats and to buy pigeons. He wanted to become a pigeon-dealer,
though he knew nothing at all about this trade. He had been told
that a lot of money could be made in this business, and was
convinced that, even without the necessary special knowledge, he
would possess enough intelligence to outsmart any other dealer.
The rats were driven out and pigeons were bought.

Unfortunately, this purchase could not be made without spending
some money. Mother had to sacrifice one of her pouches, perhaps
even two. She did it just reluctantly. The pigeons did not give
her the same joy, they gave us children. Our greatest pleasure
was to watch the dear animals changing their tender plumage.
Father had bought two pairs of very expensive "blue-striped"
pigeons. He brought them home and showed them to us. He hoped to
make at least three taler of them. Some days later, the blue
feathers lay on the ground: they had not been real, but had been
glued on. The precious "blue-striped" pigeons turned out to be
entirely worthless, common, white ones. Father purchased a very
pretty, young, grey cock pigeon for one taler and fifteen good
groschen. After a short time, the pigeon turned out to be blind
of old age. He never left the pigeonry, his value was zero. Such
and similar incidents occurred increasingly. The consequence of
this was that mother had to sacrifice another pouch to really get
the pigeon-trade going. Of course, father also tried his best.
He took no leisure-time. He attended all markets, all inns and
bars in order to buy or to find buyers. One time he bought peas,
another time vetches, he had obtained "almost for free". He was
always on the move, from one village to another, from one farmer
to another. He constantly brought home cheese, eggs, and butter,
we did not even need. He had bought them over price, just entice
the farmers' wives into a deal, and could only unload them with
difficulties and at a loss. This restless, unprofitable life
yielded no gain, but devoured the happiness of our home. It even
ravaged the remaining linen pouches. Mother talked to him kindly,
in vain. She worried and kept quiet, until it would have been a
sin to bear it any longer. Then, she arrived at a decision and
went to Judge Layritz, who turned out to be much, much more
reasonable in this case, than at that other time with our frogs.
She presented her case to him. She told him that she did love her
husband very, very much, but had to consider primarily her
children's well-being. She disclosed to him that she owned an
additional pouch, she had not shown, but kept from her husband.
She asked the judge to be so kind to tell her how she should
invest this money in order to achieve security for herself and her
children. She presented him with the pouch. He opened it and
counted. There were sixty hard, shiny, well polished talers.
This caused great astonishment! Judge Layritz thought about it,
then he said: "My dear Mrs. May, I know you. You are a good
woman, and I will vouch for you. Our midwife is old, we need a
younger one. You will go to Dresden and spent your money there on
becoming a midwife. I will arrange this! If you'll return with
the highest marks, we will hire you right away. I'm giving you my
word on this. But if you should return with lesser marks, we will
not be able to use you. But now, go back home and tell your
husband, he should come and see me right away, I'd have to talk
with him!"

So it happened. Mother went to Dresden. She returned with the
highest marks, and Judge Layritz kept his word; she was hired.
During her absence, father did all of the housework together with
grandmother. This was a hard time, a time of suffering, for all
of us. There was an outbreak of small-pox. All of us children
became ill. Grandmother did almost more than was humanly
possible; but father did so too. One of the sisters' head had
turned into a shapeless lump on account of the small-pox.
Forehead, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin had entirely
disappeared. The physician had to probe for the lips with a
knife, in order to feed the sick girl with at least some milk.
She is still alive today, the most cheerful one of us all, and has
never been sick again. The scars are still visible, which
resulted from the physician cutting her, while searching for her
mouth.

These hard times were not entirely over yet, when mother returned,
but her stay in Dresden brought a big stroke of good fortune for
me. By her hard work and her quiet, deeply sincere ways, she had
gained the favour of the two professors Grenzer and Haase, and had
told them about me, her miserable, blinded, and yet spiritually so
lively boy. She had been asked to bring me to Dresden, to be
treated by these two physicians. This was now done, and with a
quite remarkable success. I learnt to see, and returned home
healthily in all other respects as well. But all of this required
a large, large sacrifice; of course it was only large in respect
to our poor conditions. Because of all of the necessary expenses,
we had to sell the house, and the small part of the price we were
to keep as our own was hardly sufficient to pay for the most
urgent things. We moved to a rented place. - -

And now, I will turn to that person, who had the most profound and
extensive influence on my development in a spiritual respect.
While our mother's mother had been born in Hohenstein and was
therefore called the "Hohensteiner grandmother" by us, my father's
mother was from Ernstthal and therefore had to listen to the name
"Ernstthaler grandmother". The latter was an entirely peculiar,
inscrutable, noble, and, I might almost say, mysterious character.
She was to me, from my early youth on, a cherished, blissful
puzzle, from the depth of which I could scoop up wisdom without
ever running out of it. Where had she obtained all this from.
Very simple: She was a soul, nothing but a soul, and modern
psychology knows what this means. She was born in the direst need
and had grown up in the direst suffering; therefore, she regarded
everything with hoping eyes, yearning for deliverance. And
whoever is capable to hope and to believe the right way, has
already pushed all the misery of earth aside and will only find
sunshine and God's peace ahead. She was the daughter of miserably
poor folks, had lost her mother at an early age, and to feed her
father, who was neither able to stand nor to lie and was tied and
bound to an old leather arm-chair for many years, until he died.
She took care of him with an endless self-denial, which would move
a person to tears. Poverty allowed her only the cheapest of
accommodations. Her chamber's window let her see only the
cemetery, nothing else. She knew all of the graves, and thought
there would only be one course for herself and her father, to be
carried out of their humble dying chamber in a coffin towards the
churchyard. She had one lover, who had decent and honest
intentions, but she gave him up. She wanted to devote her entire
time only to her father, and the good fellow agreed with her. He
said nothing, but he waited and remained faithful to her.

Upstairs, in the attic, stood an old chest, containing even older
books. This were heirlooms, bound in leather, of various
contents, both religious and secular. It was told that there had
been clerics, scholars, and travellers in our family, when it had
been prosperous, of whom we are reminded up to this day by those
books. Father and daughter were able to read, they had both
learnt it by themselves. At nightfall, after the strife and work
of the day was done, the Reifroeckchen [1] was lit, and one of
them read to the other. Once in a while, a pause was made to
discuss what had been read. Though having read the books almost
twenty times already, they started over again and again, because
every time, new ideas were found, which seemed to be better, more
beautiful and also truer than those from before. Most frequently,
a rather large and very worn-out volume was read, the title of
which was:

[1] a small oil lamp

_The_Hakawati_
i.e.
the story-teller in Asia, Africa, Turkia, Arabia, Persia, and
India, including an appendix with interpretation, explanatio &
interpretatio, also many a comparison and images
by
Christianus Kretzschmann
who was from Germania.
Printed by Wilhelmus Candidus
A. D.: M. D. C. V.

*
* *

This book contained a large amount of meaningful, oriental tales,
which were not to be found in any previous collection.
Grandmother knew all of these tales. Usually, she recited them
literally, word by word, but in certain instances, whenever it
deemed her necessary, she made alterations or added applications,
from which became evident that she knew the spirit of the stories
she told very well, and made precise use of its effect. Her
favourite tale was the fable of Sitara. Later, it also became my
favourite, because it dealt with the geography and ethnology of
our earth and its inhabitants from a purely ethical point of view.
But let this just be a small indication, here.

The father died as a consequence of a series of hemorrhages.
Taking care of him was so exhausting that the daughter came close
to death herself, but she survived it. After the time of mourning
had passed, May, the faithful lover, came and took her on. Now
finally, finally she was truly happy! It was a marriage,
according to God's will. Two children were born, my father and a
sister before him; she later suffered a serious fall and was
crippled as a consequence of it. So you see, that we always had
our share of afflictions, or rather tests of faith. And you can
also see that I do not conceal anything. It must not be my
intension, to embellish the ugly parts. But shortly after the
birth of the second child, that sorrowful event occurred at
Christmas time, I already told about. The good young man plunged
at night with the bread into the deep, snowy ravine and froze to
death. Grandmother and both of her children had nothing to eat
during the Christmas holidays, and only found out after a long
time of agony that she had lost her beloved husband, and under
such dreadful circumstances. Hereafter came years of mourning and
then the hard times of the Napoleonic wars and of famine.
Everything was devastated. No work could be found anywhere.
Inflation grew; hunger raged. A poor, young journeyman came to
beg. Grandmother could not give him anything. She did not even
have a single piece of bread for herself and her children. He saw
that she was silently weeping. This aroused his compassion. He
left and returned after more than one hour. He poured out before
her, whatever he had got, pieces of bread, a dozen potatoes, a
rutabaga, a small, very ancient cheese, a small bag of flour, an
equally small bag of barley, a thin slice of sausage, and a tiny
piece of mutton-suet. Then, he swiftly went away to avoid her
gratitude. She never saw him again; but there is one who knows
him for sure and will not forget him. This one sent even more and
better help. The wife of a head forester had died. He lived
outside of the town and was known to be as prosperous as he was
kind-hearted. His wife had left him with a very large number of
children. He wished to employ grandmother as a housekeeper. In
this time of need, she would have liked to accept just too well,
but declared that she could not possibly part with her own
children, even if she found a place to house them. It did not
take the good man long to decide. He declared to her, he would
not care whether six or eight children ate at his house; they
would all be fed. She should just come, not without them, but
with them. This saved her from the direst need!

The stay in the quiet, lonely house of the forester was doing the
mother and her children a world of good. They grew healthier and
stronger from the better nutrition. The head forester saw
grandmother doing her best to show her gratitude and to gain his
satisfaction. She worked almost more than her strength would
allow, but felt good about it. He quietly observed this and
rewarded her by granting her children, in every respect, the same
things his own children received. Surely, he was an aristocrat
and basically proud. He ate alone with his mother-in-law.
Grandmother was just a servant, yet she did not eat in the
servant's, but the children's room. But when, after some time, he
had gained an insight into the peculiar world of her soul, he
cared for her spiritual wellbeing as well. He eased the heavy
burden of her work, allowed her to read to him and his
mother-in-law from her books in the evenings, and permitted her
then to look at his own books as well. How much did she enjoy
this! And he had such good, such useful books!

The children had, in reasonable limits, a free life. They chased
each other through the forest and got strong limbs and red cheeks.
Little May was the youngest and smallest of them all, but he
joined the others with all of his energy. And he payed attention;
he learnt and remembered. He wanted to know everything. He asked
about every object he did not know yet. Soon, he knew the names
of all plants, all caterpillars and worms, all bugs and
butterflies, which existed in his realm. He sought to familiarise
himself with their character, their properties and habits.
This zest for knowledge, gained him the head forester's special
affections, who did not even regard it beneath him, to allow the
boy to accompany him. I have to mention this, so that later
events become understandable. The following relapse from this
sunny, hopeful time of his boyhood into the previous poverty and
wretchedness could not possibly have had a positive effect on the
boy.

It was at this time that, during lunch, grandmother suddenly fell
from her chair and dropped dead to the floor. The whole house
became very excited. The physician was called. He diagnosed a
heart attack and stated that grandmother was dead and had to be
buried within three days. But she was alive. Yet, she could not
move a single limb, not even her lips or the not entirely closed
eyelids. She saw and heard everything, the weeping, the
lamentations for her. She understood every word that was spoken.
She saw and heard the carpenter, who came to take her measurements
for the coffin. When it was done, she was placed into it and put
into a cold chamber. On the day of the burial, she was laid out
in the corridor. The pall bearers came, the minister and the
cantor with the students' choir. The family started to bid its
farewell to her who appeared to be dead. Just imagine their
agony! For three days and three nights, she had made every
effort, to show by any kind of movement that she was still alive -
- in vain! Now, the last moment had come, when she could still be
saved. Once the coffin had been closed, there was no hope left.
Later, she told that in her terrible mortal fear, she had made
efforts, quite beyond what is humanly possible, to at least wiggle
one finger, when one after another came by to hold her hand for
the last time. So also did the head forester's youngest girl, who
had always felt particularly close to grandmother. Suddenly, the
child startled and screamed: "She has grabbed my hand; she wants
to hold on to me!" And really, everyone saw the seemingly
deceased, alternatingly opening and closing her hand in a slow
motion. The funeral was, of course, called off immediately.
Other physicians were brought in; grandmother was saved. But
from then on, the way she led her life was even graver and more
uplifted than before. Just rarely, she talked about what she had
thought and felt in those unforgettable three days on the
threshold between life and death. It must have been horrible.
But this also just served to strengthen her faith in God and to
deepen her confidence in Him. Just as her death had been unreal,
from now on she also regarded the so-called actual death as
equally unreal, and for many years she sought the right ideas to
explain and to prove this. It is thanks to her and her false
death that I in general only believe in life, but not in death.

Before she was mentally quite over this experience, grandmother
and her two children were hurled back into their previous way of
life, on account of the head forester being assigned to another
district and getting remarried. She returned to Ernstthal, and
again had to earn her living penny by penny. A good man, Vogel by
name and also a weaver by trade, proposed to her. Everyone kept
urging her, she had to give her children a new father; she owed
them that much. She did it, and had no cause to regret it, but
unfortunately, she became once more a widow after just a short
time. He died and left her everything he owned: poverty and the
reputation of a good, hard working man. Hereafter, her life
became quiet and even quieter. She got her girl a place with a
seamstress, and her boy was sent to a weaver, who kept him working
at the reel from dawn to dusk. After all, it was now taken for
granted that the boy had to become nothing but a weaver, though
he had definitely lost all interest in it during his stay at the
forester's house. He had already gained an entirely different
image of himself, and it is surely understandable that later,
after having been forced into this unloved craft, he got the idea
to free himself from it again by means of the pigeon-trade.
Nevertheless, he did his duty, both as a boy and as an adolescent.
He worked hard and became a capable weaver, whose merchandise
turned out so clean and accurate that every businessman liked to
have him work for him. But, in this leisure-time, he strolled
through forests and meadows, to collect plants and to keep all the
knowledge he had gained at the head forester's fast in his memory.
Therefore he took great pleasure from the fact that among the
previously mentioned inheritance of our mother there were also
some old, most interesting books, the contents of which turned out
to be of great benefit to him in these leisure-time activities.
Here, I am particularly thinking of a large, thick folio, which
had about a thousand pages and bore the following title:

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