My Life and My Efforts | Page 7

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big oriental adventure, are published, with one additional chapter in the end of the sixth volume, which was previously unpublished.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" 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