<i>WINNETOU</i> , WHITE INNOCENCE, AND SETTLER TIME

Proclaiming ‘every generation has its Winnetou’, German network RTL ushered in the return of Winnetou to television 2016 with a big-budget film trilogy, – Der Mythos Lebt. This article analyses trilogy dialogue Karl May's original 1893 novels and 1960s West westerns using concepts settler time white innocence. It brings critical focus on race that is lacking much existing scholarship May, showing how whiteness functions franchise as structuring principle. In new Winnetou, blood brotherhood between Old Shatterhand Mescalero Apache becomes way forging connections not only across cultures but temporal lines, allowing for imposition onto Indigenous persons erasure sovereignty survival order centre narrative innocence reinscribe fantasies conquest American West. Mit der Aussage, ‘Jede Generation hat ihren Winnetou’ leitete deutsche Fernsehsender die Rückkehr von ins Fernsehen mit teuren Filmtrilogie Lebt ein. Dieser Aufsatz analysiert Winnetou-Filmtrilogie im Dialog Mays Originalromanen und den westdeutschen Western 1960er Jahre, wobei Konzepte Siedlerzeit weißen Unschuld angewandt werden. Durch einen kritischen Fokus auf Aspekt ‘Race’ wird aufgezeigt, was vielen bestehenden Studien May fehlt, entfaltet, wie Weißsein Winnetou-Franchise als Strukturprinzip funktioniert. Im neuen Blutsbruderschaft zwischen dem deutschen zu einer Möglichkeit, Verbindungen nicht nur über Kulturen, sondern auch Zeitgrenzen hinweg knüpfen, es ermöglicht, indigenen Personen aufzuerlegen Souveränität das Überleben Indigenen auszulöschen, um ein Narrativ zentrieren Fantasien weißer Eroberung amerikanischen Westen neu einzuschreiben. On Christmas Day, 2016, some five million Germans gathered their living rooms watch screen. The trailer major event, title Lebt, directed by Philipp Stölzl, features almost every imaginable western cliché: Native Americans wielding hatchets bows arrows against gun-toting cowboys, galloping mustangs, tipis, people dancing around campfires paddling canoes, throwing punches, breathtaking wide-angle shots landscapes including mountains foothills, sky-blue lakes, puffing steam trains, railroad bridges over gaping gorges. Interspersed these scenes are intertitles disconnected phrases: ‘ein deutscher Mythos’, ‘die unsterblichen Helden’, and, music swells, ‘RTL bringt sie zurück’.1 Television does make it clear exactly which version ‘unsterblichen Helden’ bringing back. Are characters from ‘preposterous simplified world, good fights evil’ enormously successful 1890s or reincarnations corny Cold War-era films?2 My starting point this thus kind confused nostalgia film's marketing relies on, seeking appeal simultaneously fans novels, films, even East westerns. filmmakers were forced change films’ titles after legal challenge Verlag, able retain use main title, ensuring connection novels.3 Filmmakers hyped ‘authentic’ filming locations they meant had appeared films ran contest win trip Croatia visit locales. teaser featured images Pierre Brice playing words ‘Unser aller Blutsbruder: Jede Winnetou’.4 actor Mario Adorf, who played villain Santer 1963 film, plays father third part miniseries. series also pays lip service other side iron curtain, Gojko Mitić, Serbian-born red made studio Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), Intschu tschuna, Winnetou. Kathleen Loock argued through actors Croatian inclusion modernised versions Martin Böttcher's music, take ‘reconciliatory stance’ together Germany ‘for common nation-building project’; première holidays ties traditions Day broadcasts westerns.5 article, I offer reading new, nostalgic theorists, colonial studies, theory understanding continuing stories ostensibly about peoples resistance. By taking role within seriously, addresses relative lack race-critical research relation works subsequent adaptations. foundational myth representation moral, benevolent saviour figures somehow separate imperial history attempting build continuity popular divided Germany, impose notions time, subsuming resistance into benevolence. being at story anti-imperial struggles ending named chief requires sovereignty. interest well documented: ‘Why can't quit racist Problem’ (Deutsche Welle, 2020), ‘Lost Translation: Germany's Fascination West’ (New York Times, 2014), ‘Germany's Obsession Indians Touching Occasionally Surreal’ (Indian Country Today, 2018). Hartmut Lutz coined term ‘Indianthusiasm’, translation ‘Indianertümelei’, describe phenomenon.6 Lutz, Florentine Strzelczyk, Renae Watchman define ‘an idealized romanticized fascination with, about, North America roots nineteenth-century imagination’.7 Susanne Zantop describes ‘the exoticized yet sympathetic, idealizing depiction Other’.8 Peter Bolz further notes supposed particular affinity fiction, rather, fictional like only.9 Increasingly, romantic stereotypes phenomenon supplemented critiques responses one-sided relationship, such Drew Hayden Taylor's Searching (2018) Red Haircrow's Forget (2018). Representations began circulating Europe long Columbus's reports reached European shores; traveller's accounts, both non-fiction fictionalised, collected looted objects themselves, centuries followed.10 Chateaubriand's novel Atala published 1801, Noble Savage literary stock character representing man his natural state, uncorrupted civilisation. Throughout nineteenth century, number media representations available increased, driven travel, settlement, exchange. case, press full diverse accounts life United States encounters relations travellers, immigrants, anthropologists.11 However, person most responsible popularising undoubtedly May.12 Born Saxony 1842, grew up poverty become an author. Teasing out exact details biography many stories, lies, exaggerations upbringing challenging. He initially trained teacher, career derailed repeated allegations theft ultimately resulted prison terms fraud. After release 1874, he turned writing, producing youth literature under variety pseudonyms. His big break came 1888 when publisher Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld agreed publish travel Orient Cycle trilogy. As popularity grew, increasingly blend fiction reality, conflating himself first-person narrator going so far dress Kara Ben Nemsi pose photos costume artfully chosen props.13 later years plagued scandals, journalists reported criminal past, plagiarism, early pseudonymous writings, false misleading self-representation. death 1912, widow, Klara publisher, Fehsenfeld, undertook rehabilitate safeguard legacy, founding Verlag works, often edited redacted form. Estimations circulation varies fifty one hundred copies more, translations dozens languages, making Goethe Schiller Mann, widely read author all time. For influential scholarly surprisingly thin. Colleen Cook noted 1982, serious begun relatively recently, Gesellschaft decade before publication journal, Jahrbuch Gesellschaft, beginning 1970.14 English-language focused West, Richard Cracroft's analysis ‘weird Wild West’.15 Scholarly consensus holds offered ‘collective wish fulfilments’ readers rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, mass emigration, escapism world exciting adventure where ‘Leistung Lohn einem genau adäquaten Verhältnis stehen’.16 Though been written discussions remain lacking. Scholars note seeming contradiction sense human rights coexists stereotypical non-whites seemingly struggle ‘heterogeneous highly-contradictory’ oeuvre.17 Jeffrey Sammons pains depict non-racist, claim supported depoliticised definition racism ‘a systematic doctrine discover, define, cases, evaluate differences among races’; then, reconcile instances whites presented superior those races narrator's ‘impassioned lecture racism’.18 what Kuester ‘dualism [May] cannot convincingly overcome’.19 Heribert Feilitzsch negatively coded described ‘dark’ racialising language, nonetheless unwilling append word ‘racist’ preferring instead adjectives apolitical, ethnocentric, chauvinistic, nationalistic.20 Petra Küppers’ more critical, noting strong emphasis physicality corporeality characters, serves othering strategy.21 Overall, scholars, commentators, see positive portrayals minoritised enough neutral anti-racist. 2019 special issue journal Seminar topic ‘Building Transdisciplinary Relationships: Studies’, editors Watchman, Carrie Smith, Markus Stock engagement field Studies limited, Indigenous-related issues restricted unsurprising Indianthusiasm least stereotyping romanticisms May’, call moving ‘beyond “Winnetou research”’.22 Given continued relevance culture there indeed need look beyond questions representations. Consequently, Black feminist my perspectives can help illuminate RTL's multi-media promotion campaign ‘historically accurate, authentic, overall grittier’ engages nostalgia, A boy old script, children tipi, family watching play movie theatre, boxy wooden room, cutting show chronology fandom endures contemporary moment. demonstrates Svetlana Boym's ‘nostalgia appears be longing place, actually yearning different our childhood, slower rhythms dreams’.23 imagery full-length trailers conjures wide-open spaces westerns, another slippery, callouts traditions, reference unclear subjective, post-war era emigration during wrote settlement frontier set. argue mode timekeeping denies modernity peoples. When represented primitive, backward, outside-of-time, consigned perpetual leaves present future open occupied settlers. several contributors Indianthusiasm: Perspectives. Ahmoo Angeconeb observes, ‘They wanted keep view; didn't want hear modern Ojibway here. That we lived wooden-structure homes, drove cars’, while Audrey Huntley similarly notes, me mid-eighties nineties real struggle, just introducing “real indians” frozen ones imagine, actual here, ideas should be’.24 resonates Mark Rifkin's argument Beyond Settler Time today ‘double bind dominant reckonings Either inserted defined non-native terms’.25 temporality ‘into extension colonialism’ ‘normalize[s] presence, privilege, power'.26 conjured exist caricatures, portrayed actors, thereby naturalises non-Indigenous presence Americas actors. exists reduces Indigeneity ‘truncated, compressed, depoliticized mythical past’ ‘subsume[s] histories progress-driven project colonisation, besides reaffirming dominance racial hierarchies’.27 tends fetishise certain nations periods authentic consider other, example modern, iterations identity inauthentic. normalises progress don't fit replaced instead. narratives no space survivance, Gerald Vizenor's abstract concept ‘focuse[s] active deconstructing ahistorical problematic understandings people’.28 interpreted critics encompassing endurance shifts away mere survivors genocide emphasise ongoing acts domination victimry. No adaptation survival; survive books do aid figure. attempts ‘self-reflexively comment[s] Winnetou's significance cultural imagination’, significantly diverge representational history.29 rather builds upon remake viewing audience. base assertion Loock's include unified memory describes, ‘activates associated nation-building, circumstances negotiation established meanings concerning “Germanness” post-reunification era’.30 activating exclusion appropriation Indigeneity, erases any possibility survivance appropriation, claiming Germans. always racialised, book adaptations white, benevolent, erasing undergirded fictions innocent genocide, exemplified figure Shatterhand. Gloria Wekker's refers Dutch self-representation colour-blind morally ethically superior, claims obscure imperialism attitudes.31 James Baldwin's writings ‘crime’ Fire Next Time; crime is, Beau Fly Jones explains, ‘white man's own brutality’.32 Racism sustained linked civil discourse. might seem strange twentieth century ‘innocent’, post-Holocaust reckoning effect rendering (German ‘Rasse’) taboo.33 Wulf Hund argues spite international disgrace faced following World War II, still retained could therefore continue draw Muster des Kolonialrassismus.’34 official recognition discrimination enabled disavowal Germans’ anti-Black -Indigenous racism, evidenced, example, scathing indictment policies enable Nations Working Group Experts People African Descent 2017 visit.35 Relatedly, scholar her experience she ‘liminal racism’, recognised than Turkish acceptable minority eyes interlocuters: ‘This in-between “less than” actual, explicit racists is. […] It's comfortable metaphorically patted head simply because am indian.’36 UN distinct interrelated, exacerbated difficulty naming German-language contexts move helps maintain.37 differs cases Baldwin Wekker respectively, illustrates innocence, whiteness, flexible concept. set States, settlers positioned colonisers slaveholders defenders populations. crimes violence benefiting them; propagated writers West.38 Rainer Hatoum reminds us colonisation disparate nations, Germans.39 cites Carl Schurz, fled 1848 revolution eventually became Secretary Interior President Rutherford B. Hayes, opposed removal Bureau Indian Affairs Department. positioning ‘friend Indian’ military peoples, embraced politics assimilation led creation residential school system; Carlisle Industrial School tenure Interior. best understood same assimilationist spectrum: portrayal fellow Apaches grounded perception ability ‘civilised’ values behaviours.40 post-WWII renaissance evidence importance Festival Bad Segeberg, yearly open-air theatre performance 1952, stages ever-growing crowds. Katrin Sieg Ethnic Drag, ‘In essence, stage constructed hero exceptional them.’41 centring identificatory featuring quest prove versions, turn influenced audiences reconciliation ‘Wiedergutmachung’.42 continues tradition masking something safe innocent. Thus, work franchise. page, stage, screen appreciation masks logic justifies sustains domination. At core, offers specifically embedded belong past. How manifests itself three novel, will examined section. Different differ slightly ‘racial temporality’, Crystal Fleming's content relationships present, future.43 temporality, offering romanticised vision primarily Plains relegates past earlier development. superficially presents them ill-suited comparison policies. great transition punctuated discourses finality. 1890 census, US government officially announced closure longer unbroken line States. Winnetou’s occurs begins recede historical structural level little inevitability, desirability, Manifest Destiny end ways life. introduction evokes inevitability decline very second paragraph: ‘Ja, rote Nation liegt Sterben’.44 creates Lisa King ‘May frame’ ‘requires dying Indian, fascinating examine worthy lament doomed perish except preserved collecting’.45 modelled Uncas Fenimore Cooper's Last Mohicans (1826), similar operate, embodies everything Native, rendered unthreatening hegemony precisely last race. Er war jezt leichtes, leinenes Gewand gekleidet, trug keine Waffe hielt Buch Hand, dessen Einband großer Goldschrift Wort Hiawatha lesen war. Indianer, dieser Sohn eines Volkes, welches ‘Wilden’ zählt, konnte lesen, er besaß sogar Sinn Geschmack für Höhere. Longfellows berühmtes Gedicht Hand Apache-Indianers! Das hätte ich mir nie träumen lassen!50 peaceful, civilised, educated counteracted somewhat surprise find ‘savage’ possesses traits. primitivism, filtered Eurocentric perceptions patronising tone humanistic paternalistic.51 positive, outside colonialism, Gerd Stein argues, ‘Der edle Wilde ist eine Funktion Kolonialismus’, Wiedergutmachungsversuch, Verunglimpfung Greueltaten begleitete, denen N—r Südseeinsulaner ausgesetzt waren, seit Weißen entdeckt hatten’.52 Thus vaunted helping embed hierarchies leave subservient Europeans. What seems ‘good’ ‘bad’ Kiowa proximity whiteness.53 Nicole Perry, Louise Barnett, originally conceived untouched civilisation relevant. Instead relevant dualism Natives; coming contact Europeans, showed loyalty fealty Europeanisation Christianisation ‘good’.54 ‘Good’ Natives let themselves shaped guided Klekih-petra, whose name translates ‘weißer Vater’.55 ‘Bad’ reject influence corrupted savage animalistic, warrior Tangua, having ‘strenge, finstere Gesichtszüge Paar Raubtieraugen, nichts Gutes zuzutrauen Es sprach offenbarste Raub- Kampflust aus ihnen’.56 be, i