The German obsession with Winnetou

Fetishizing Native Americans

In Germany, Wild for Winnetou

By Michael KimmelmanFor decades, Germans have been obsessed with a Native American named Winnetou. Only strange thing is: he's a fictional character from books written by a German who only went to America in the last years of his life. What does this obsession say about German identity?What the Germans do:At powwows—there are dozens every year—thousands of Germans with an American Indian fetish drink firewater, wear turquoise jewelry and run around Baden-Württemberg or Schleswig-Holstein dressed as Comanches and Apaches. There are clubs, magazines, trading cards, school curriculums, stupendously popular German-made Wild West films and outdoor theaters, including one high in the sandstone cliffs above the tiny medieval fortress town of Rathen, in Saxony, where cowboys fight Indians on horseback. A fake Wild West village, Eldorado, recently shot up on the outskirts of Templin, the city where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, grew up.Right. So being an Indian in Germany is all about emulating the fierce warriors of the Plains. (Including the Southern Plains where the Apache occasionally roamed.) And nothing about learning the rich diversity and complexity of the hemisphere's thousands of Indian cultures.“May framed a popular image of North America, with Indians as a dying race, tragically killed off by fate and by the spread of a new empire,” he said. The doctor ushered me toward a painting that shows Indians ambushing an oncoming train, trains having signified Manifest Destiny. In May’s books Winnetou’s loyal sidekick, Old Shatterhand, was a German émigré, a schoolteacher who went West, became a crack shot, had a deadly right jab and, not coincidentally, got work as a surveyor for a railroad company.Is that what the doctor told you, Kimmelman? Actually, Winnetou is the sidekick to Old Shatterhand, not the other way around. In the first Winnetou book, at least.

An explanation for the Germans' fascination with Winnetou and other (Plains) Indians:Dr. Zeilinger wouldn’t go so far as to say that May demonized the United States, which clearly he didn’t, although Hans Ottomeyer, the director of the museum, who wandered by to listen in on the conversation at that point, said: “May taught Germans that America was a wild place. There were natives and intruders, and he taught us to be suspicious of intruders, half of whom are good, half are very bad.” Like all German men, Mr. Ottomeyer, who’s 61, lapsed unbidden into recollections of reading May’s books as a boy. Children read him less today, he added. “The West used to be on the border of the imagination,” he said. “Now it’s a place they see every day, full of conflict and catastrophe.”

You might say that May has become a Rorschach of German identity. German “natural sympathy” for American Indians is rooted in ancient times, Dr. Zeilinger explained. The Roman historian Tacitus described German tribes as uncorrupted, primitive, fierce and at one with nature, a people on the edge of a corrupt and voracious empire. May tapped into that primordial Germanness and also into what became, by the mid-19th century, a growing interest in America and the wider world.Comment:  I read Winnetou, the first book in the series. It glorifies Old Shatterhand, the German hero and protagonist, more than Winnetou. Its message is that progress is inevitable, Indians have degenerated into wretches, and only a few "noble savages" are left.

Some readers may misinterpret this as a positive message, but really it's negative. Winnetou the good Indian is the exception, not the rule. By partnering with Old Shatterhand and eventually adopting Christianity, Winnetou proves that the white man's ways are best.

In Winnetou, the main villains are a tribe of "bad" Indians. So the story is about how a good white man triumphs over bad Indians with a good Indian's help. In other words, an early version of the Lone Ranger legend.

The Hitler connection

Like other Germans, Hitler loved the Winnetou books too. It sort of make sense that he'd associate Aryan Germans with "uncorrupted, primitive, fierce" Indians like Winnetou. And the rest of the Western world with "a corrupt and voracious empire" intruding on his pure German state. In his mind, Jews were undoubtedly the worst example of how civilization made people decadent and degenerate.

You have to twist things a bit to see how Hitler interpreted the books. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou both represent good Christian Aryans. The bad cowboys and Indians both represent decadent Jews and other Europeans. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou inevitably dealt defeat and death to the bad guys.

If Americans defeated the real Indians and Old Shatterhand defeated the fictional Indians, that gave Hitler a template. As a good Christian Aryan, he'd defeat the "bad Indians" (Jews and other Europeans) threatening his sanctified Germany. Hence Karl Mays' books helped Hitler envision conquest and genocide.

For more on the subject, see The Winnetou Films and Germans Think They Own Native Culture.