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Native Americans in the German Cultural Imagination

Susanne Scharnowski

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Topic: One of the most widely read and best-selling German authors of all time was Karl May, a writer of popular fiction which was to a large extent set in the so-called “Wild West” of the United States of America. One of the best-known and most popular fictional characters in German literature is one of May’s heroes, the Mescalero Apache chief ‘Winnetou’, who, according to an article in the New York Times, is (or: was) to Germans “like Paul Bunyan, Abe Lincoln and Elvis rolled into one”. ‘Winnetou’, however, is no exception: Native Americans have played a surprisingly important role in German cultural history since the 18th century. They have been portrayed as the ultimate “Noble Savages”, as exemplary humans or even, through a supposed affinity by choice, as model Germans. But Native Americans, or “Indianer”, as they used to be called in German, have not just served as an exoticist “Other”, as an inspiration for children (and adults!) who have “played ‘Indianer’” since the 19th century. They have also been instrumental in political ideologies. Hitler recommended Karl May’s Winnetou as a model for his general staff during the battles of World War II; as a reaction, Karl May’s books were shunned in the GDR. And even in today’s Germany, Native Americans feature prominently not only in the Wild West amusement park “Eldorado” near Templin, the town where the former chancellor Angela Merkel grew up, but also in the imagination of environmental activists. Most recently, new children’s books about the “young Winnetou” have been retracted by the publisher because the books were criticised for their alleged “cultural appropriation” and “racist” representations of Native Americans. Meanwhile, the German minister for the economy and climate protection, when visiting the indigenous Kambeba tribe in the Amazon rain forest, described himself as a „chieftain“ of the Germans – using the German word “Häuptling”, which caused criticism as well as mockery in the media. Program: We will study extracts from literary texts depicting Native Americans from the 19th and 20th centuries and analyse films based on Karl May and other others, produced in the FRG and the GDR (West and East Germany). We will study the political implications of images of Native Americans in the context of colonialism, in imperial Germany, in National Socialism, and in the GDR, and we will discuss and evaluate concepts such as the “Noble Savage”, “cultural appropriation” and racial/ ethnic stereotyping and exoticism. As an introduction, students may want to read the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_German_popular_culture Is this the right course for you? The course is open to students from all fields, from the sciences as well as from the humanities. However, you should be able to read English texts at a fairly high level, be prepared to study a wide variety of theoretical as well as literary texts and be interested in the topic as well as in textual and discourse analysis. Workload and Assessment: To obtain 5 ECTS credits, you will have to study and engage with the course materials (an average of 15-20 pages of academic and/ or literary texts per week), pass a mid-term test before Christmas and sit a written exam at the end of the semester. If you want to participate, though, you must attend the first, at the latest the second session. In general, students must attend at least 85% of the classes (14 out of 16). Some of the materials will be available in digital form on Blackboard; additionally, students have to purchase the reader (a collection of photocopied texts in printed form) from the copy shop at Königin-Luise-Str. 39, near U-Bahnhof Dahlem Dorf close