Native American Awareness Post

Dancing Indian
Meissen
(1907-1924)

It is a weekday morning while Dear Husband is visiting over Spring Break. We have had a relaxed breakfast, he is off to practice on a friend’s electronic piano, and I am at the busstop on my way to the archive. I usually walk this stretch (takes 8-10 minutes), but because I’m coming in late today, I decide to take the bus (1-minute ride). Suddenly there is a cheerful woman with a large microphone in front of me:

“HI! I’m So-and-So from Mitteldeutschen Rundfunk [radio]. Once upon a time there were cowboys and Indians. Completely anonymously, if you could choose, would you rather have been a cowboy or an Indian?” And she smiles encouragingly as she points the microphone at me.

I actually don’t understand her question until the very end of her Spiel, which gives me very little time to react. By the usual rules of conversation, it’s my turn to speak. However, my first reaction is to object to the question entirely, since what she’s really asking (historically speaking), is whether I would rather have been a resource-hungry, racist imperialist or a victim of genocide. But I'm not sure I possess the vocabulary to address that subject on the fly. And of course, that’s not what she’s asking. She wants to know what character I would want to play in the American West fiction Germans have consumed voraciously since Karl May’s (1842-1912) immensely popular novels began appearing in the 1890s.

Kary May--a native Saxon--had a rough life. As a young man, he spent eight years in prison for theft and fraud. He had trouble with his publishers that led to the dissolution of his first marriage. And at some point he began to believe he had experienced the exotic adventures he wrote about the American West and the Orient.

After getting out of jail the second time, and since his teaching license had been revoked, May tried to live on the straight and narrow by publishing short stories set in his native Saxony. Then he branched out to the genre of travel writing. Eventually he began writing allegorical narratives of the triumph of Good over Evil set in exotic locations: escapist fiction for Germany's nervous middle classes. Around the turn of the century May did actually travel across much of Asia from Egypt to Indonesia. A little while later he spent six weeks in the upstate New York area. But Germany's most famous portrayer of the American West never set foot anywhere near the Mississippi, much less beyond it. Rather, he discussed the human condition using archetypes like the "noble savage" (Apache Chief Winnetou) and Winnetou's white blood brother, Old Shatterhand. The Karl May Museum in the Dresden suburb of Radebeul is located in "Villa Shatterhand," named for May's alter-ego, who in the tales acts as a cross-cultural bridge from the amoral morass of Western Civilization to what May imagined as the purer society of the Native Americans.

These ideas were popular when May was writing and remained popular because of his writing. "Indian" themes are common in the popular literature I am looking at for my dissertation. For instance, while researching the posh Lahmann's Sanatorium, famous for its dietary cures and located in the wealthy neighborhood on the heights above my first Dresden apartment, I found the following image in a local newspaper in 1910. The sanatorium "guests" had celebrated Fasching (Carnival) "in an especially merry (or humorous) way" by dressing up as "Indians," complete with wigs and face paint. What fun to frolic in the woods! As long as we're back in time for Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake)!

„Karneval im Kurort Weiβer Hirsch,“ Illustrirte Neueste. Wochen-Chronik der Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten. Nr. 9. (Sonnabend, 26. Februar 1910), S. 8. Courtesy of Dr. Marina Lienert, Institut für die Geschiche der Medizin, TU Dresden.

May  has long been an influential figure in German literature; his books have sold 100 million copies in German and another 100 million copies in almost 40 languages. German author and Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) once said, "He is the most brilliant representative of a truly original type of fiction--i.e. fiction as wish-fulfillment...." And that is precisely the difficulty I have with the radio interviewer's question on this morning. Isn’t it nice for 21st-century white Westerners to imagine themselves as "cowboys" and "Indians," while the reality was and is--at times grimmer, but certainly always more complicated.

So I could challenge the question. Instead, I use the vocabulary I do have to answer something banal along the lines of, "I would have been a cowgirl, because they had so many adventures." And the smiling interviewer moves on the the next busstop. Since then I have checked the MDR website a couple times, but I haven't found out whether my little blurb ended up on the radio or not. I did learn that one of the most popular German songs a year ago was Jörg Bausch's "Cowboy und Indianer," a pop love song: "Come, take out the lasso, we'll play cowboys and Indians! ... If you surround me, I'll give myself up to you."

Better are the lyrics the German pop band Die Prinzen sing in “Mein Bester Freund” (My Best Friend). The rollicking verses list Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, and Winnetou as "mein bester Freund." Why? "Because they fight/ against injustice in the world." At the last verse, the upbeat tune slows down as they sing,

"Unfortunately these friends are all dead
and that is very difficult for me.
Unfortunately, these friends are all dead,
they were in my imagination."

The music picks up again with the final chorus: "THERE-FORE, now I fight/ against injustice in the world."

There is nothing wrong with fantasy, unless it substitutes for knowledge about the real world. And in the real world, many Native Americans are marginalized members of American society; they still live with the consequences of decisions made a century ago or more. Not coincidentally, the United Methodist Church recognizes this coming Sunday (May 8) as Native American Ministries Sunday. I invite you to "fight against injustice in the world" with me by a) learning about these ministries and b) contributing (no amount too small!) to their scholarship fund. The link tells the story of one seminary student who has benefited from this fund and can take you to their secure line donation form.

"AND WE'LL fight/ against injustice in world./ Yes we'll always fight/ against injustice in the world!"