Advent, Advent! And Der Schatz im Silbersee

Advent, Advent! In those days, 69 years ago — from December 12 to December 14, 1953 — Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure in the Silver Lake) premiered, the first of many movies about the famous, albeit fictional, Apache Chief made famous by Karl May. The movie had three million visitors in its first year, 12 million altogether in theaters alone,
and since it is shown on German TV before Christmas, by now every German must have seen it twice. Winnetou, with his "blood brother" Old Shatterhand, the main character, was played by the late Pierre Brice, a French actor, who would continue the role in a half dozen follow-ups. But who was Karl May? The author, who only came to America late in his life and imagines most of his adventures, was from Saxony. He is mentioned in our book: Leipzig! The City of Books and Music, about the history of the 1000-year-old city. Here is an excerpt.

During Karl May’s sojourn in Leipzig in March 1865, no one knew that he would one day bear the title of most-read author in Germany—indeed, at the time, the twenty-three-year-old had not yet published a single word. He was already using pseudonyms, however, though his motives were not all that poetic in nature—serving only in the illegal acquisition of others’ property. And so it was that he stepped into Erler’s fur shop on the corner of the Brühl and Reichsstrasse on March 20, 1865, under the illustrious name of Hermes Kupferstecher, chose a beaver fur, and arranged to have it delivered to his rented room at the St. Thomas Churchyard.

 

May’s beaver coat was not the only dead fur animal on the Brühl at that time, which was teeming with Rauchwaren. The root of the word Rauchwaren is the Old German word rauh, meaning “hairy” or “shaggy.” The fact that Leipzig, of all places, developed as the center of the fur trade had something to do with the significance of the trade fairs and with the city’s location in the heart of Europe, where it connected fur suppliers in the east with markets in the west. Though at first, Leipzig really was just more of an industrial meeting place and would not have its own fur industry for quite some time.

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Karl May had no inkling of any of this in 1865, but he did have other concerns of his own. His formidable beaver coat, which he stole under a pretense on his way to the pawn shop, got him four years in jail in Zwickau, a short while later, which would not be May’s only prison sentence. While he wrote his novels after his sojourns in prison, the ideas for them came to him while he was behind bars, so one might conclude that the compelling workmanship of a bunch of dead rodents indirectly led to the birth of Winnetou, the famed, albeit fictional, Apache chief from the Wild West, who fought side by side with his white brother, Old Shatterhand, both known to every man, woman, and child in Germany.

 

Below: This is The Brühl, and Thomaskirche