#i think the amount of people who believe Winnetou is accurate has very much decreased but that may just be my bubble

[winnetou-oldshatterhand]

Honestly, this is a good explanation from what I understand.

Obviously, as you might be able to tell: I love the books. I've watched the movies, I've read the books (though not all of them, there are a lot). Prefer the books over the movies. Never actually been to the theatre games though.

So yeah, the books have their good parts. I enjoy Karl May's style of writing, his descriptions of both characters and nature, I enjoy his sense of humour that occasionally shines through, the basic quirks of his characters in many cases and mostly the fact that conflict tends to be solved by talking rather than fighting whenever possible. I like that the books make me laugh and I like trying to figure out how the real story might've played out considering the books were allegedly written and therefore edited by the protagonist.

That being said:

1) If Karl May still earned money from the books I'd think twice about buying them. There's a lot of racism in there, though one can argue that overall they're progressive for their time. I just download them for free, copyright is expired after all

2) The books are absurdly inaccurate as actual sources on Native American culture. As is pretty much all fanfic because you'd have to rework the books entirely. I try to get some information from and about actual Native Americans and their lives in both the past and the present too.

3) It's a white saviour reforming the noble savage who becomes a Christian in the end. The basic premise is a racist mess already.

4) The movies, especially the old ones, are even worse than the books in my opinion. Sure, less deep faith Christianity, but also way more explosions and gunfights and one group is the definite bad guys without much motivation.

Finally, let's talk about German fans. Many definitely do not understand why blackface/redface is bad or why the costumes are bad - I had that discussion just last weekend. Their opinion comes down to "Well dressing up isn't harming anyone, we do it because we love them, and also I'm not offended when someone thinks all Germans wear Lederhosen all the time", this being the people who would casually dress up their kids as Native Americans, not the ones going to reenactments. (I got at least one of the people I was arguing with to accept that if Native Americans say please don't do this we should respect that but yeah, general opinion seems to be 'we're not physically hurting them what's the problem', same with actors 'if you can't play a person with another skin colour then that just embeds racism and only the person themself can play themselves on screen next')

TL;Dr: In my opinion reading and enjoying the books as adventure novels is fine, as a part of German cultural history, but don't expect to learn anything about Native Americans or accurate history from them and maybe consider listening to the actual people about returning the artifacts we have in our museums and accepting that some of their religious practices are closed and secret.

It'll take a while longer before we manage to convince Germans not to dress up as other ethnicities, especially ones that were forced to silence or lose their culture in favour of Christianity. That conversation has just barely started here.

Ok I have to ask; what’s with the Germans’ obsession with Native Americans? I hear about how German people will literally throw themselves at native Americans and then indianthusiam being a thing like ????????????

Oh I dont even know where to start here tbh, I'm sorry if this ends up being a pretty long post

I think the German obesession with Native Americans is often thought to be a "newer" phenomenon starting with Karl May's Winnetou novels but it actually goes back to as early as the 17th and 18th century. Depictions of Native Americans in art and literature were a thing all over Europe but unlike the French and British for example, Germans never really came into direct contact with Native Americans which led to projections on (romaticized) NAs. Basically the simplified thought process was "NAs are wild and free. We're not but we want and dream to be just as free as them. That's one thing we, Germans, have in common with Native Americans."

(Brief german history lesson here for context reasons) 1871: Germany becomes a nation for the first time in history after a nationalistic war against France. It's time to find an "origin story" for the nation to unify the many small states and to do that they focused on "Germania" written by roman historian Tacitus. In Germania he praised the Germanic peoples for their independence, sincerity and their closeness to nature but also described them as savage and cruel. (remember these attributes)

Now they took the Romans (the conquerers) and equated them with the French, same thing with the German peoples (the pure, wild tribes) and Germans. So Romans = French, Germani = Germans.

Then they did the whole thing again but this time they drew parallels to the colonial wars in which Indigenous people fought against the British and French -> remember the free, independent germanic people (germans), living in harmony with nature while also having their violent moments? Another similarity between Native Americans and Germans. The projection continues.

1870s onwards: One of the best-selling German writers, Karl May, writes his extremely successful Winnetou novels. I have to admit I never read the books or watched the movies so I'll just copy paste a summary from wikipedia here sorry:

'First-person narrator Old Shatterhand encounters the Apache Winnetou, and after initial dramatic events, a true friendship arises between them; on many occasions, they give proof of great fighting skill, but also of compassion for other human beings. Winnetou became the chief of the tribe of the Mescalero Apaches (and of the Apaches in general, with the Navajo included) after his father Intschu-tschuna and his sister Nscho-tschi were slain by the white bandit Santer. He rode a horse called Iltschi ("Wind") and had a famous rifle called Silberbüchse (The Silver Gun, a double-barrelled rifle whose stock and butt were decorated with silver studs). Old Shatterhand became the blood brother of Winnetou and rode the brother of Iltschi, called Hatatitla (Lightning). In a number of adaptations, Winnetou referred to himself in the third person.'

These books really sparked the german love/obsession for Native Americans and May's romantic and idealized depictions and projections of NAs have heavily influenced generations of Germans, even to the point that Winnetou is often prioritised as a source over texts and books written by actual Native Americans themselves. The fact that a comedic parody of Winnetou (and the Western genre in general), Der Schuh des Manitu, is the most successful german movie after World War 2 also shows that pretty well I think.

Americanist Hartmut Lutz (who coined the term Indianthusiasm) states that after WW2, Indianthusiasm served as kind of a "surrogate" for guilt about the Holocaust. The 19th century "Wild West" became a "distant, vaguely defined past" where it was the Americans who were perpetuating genocide and German immigrants to the United States (like Karl May's Old Shatterhand in Winnetou) became the ones who were trying to stop the genocide.

From the 70s onwards Native American hobbyism (also called "Indian Hobbyism", or "Indianism") became popular in Germany. It's basically Germans attempting to historically reenact Native American culture of the early contact period.

1st picture: Leipzig, 1970 | 2nd: Schwerin, 1982

This is done as a hobby and pastime (weekend retreats or summer camp) in several European countries, but is most common in Germany, where it has approximately 40,000 practitioners.

Unfortunately a lot of Germans tend to not take using blackface or redface seriously at all. I remember recently, I think 2019 (? idk correct me if I'm wrong) a kindergarten in Hamburg tried to bring attention to cultural appropriation and asked the parents to please not dress up their kids as Native Americans for the daycare's carnival party and parents all over Germany (and not just parents) threw this huge tantrum like all these grown ass people behaving like toddlers because of costumes like their lives depended on them. All those discussions about whether cultural appropriation is bullshit or not while no one even bothered to ask actual Natives and quite frankly I dont know how to end this post, I just hope we can someday have a discussion about this without half the nation breaking down in tears.