My Life and My Efforts | Page 5

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