Wanting to extinguish a controversy, we sometimes make it start again. The German publishing house Ravensburger learned this the hard way after withdrawing from its catalog two children’s albums featuring Winnetou, this imaginary Apache created at the end of the 19th century.e century by the novelist Karl May (1842-1912) and ultra-known across the Rhine.
Published to accompany the film Der junge Häuptling Winnetou (“The young chef Winnetou”), directed by Mike Marzuk and released in cinemas on August 11, the two books only made a quick run through bookstores. Because of “lots of negative feedback”the publishing house decided after only a few days to no longer offer them for sale, explaining that they conveyed “a fictionalized imagination full of clichés”unrelated to the real story of “oppression of indigenous peoples”. On Monday August 22, Ravensburger boss Clemens Meier assured that ” [s]we intention was never to hurt anyone’adding that his house was meant to be “very attentive to the issue of diversity and cultural appropriation”.
“Wokist Hysteria”
Far from calming people’s minds, the decision to withdraw the two books from sale was very strongly criticized. For the conservative tabloid Picture, Ravensburger publishing capitulated to “wokist hysteria”. “It recalls the period of Stalinism, when the adventures of Winnetou could only circulate under the coat”was also indignant Hubertus Knabe, the former director of the Hohenschönhausen memorial, the seat of the central prison of the Stasi in the time of East Germany.
Also on the left, several personalities expressed their incomprehension, such as the former president of the Social Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, who declared on Twitter: “When I was a child, I loved Karl May’s books, especially the Winnetou. When my hero died, I shed torrents of tears, but no more than Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn did that make me a racist. This is why Winnetou always has its place in my library for my children. »
By their virulence, these reactions came to recall the place that Winnetou occupies in Germany, where his adventures have been the subject of numerous television and cinematographic adaptations as well as multiple theatrical stagings. Like those that have taken place since 1952 in the small town of Bad Segeberg, in the north of the country, attracting nearly 250,000 spectators each year.
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