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This Walter was also the man who always a.s.sured me, in writing and orally, upon my inquiries that those twenty thousand had not been reached yet. Furthermore, I was not worried in the least, neither for my rights nor for my "fine gratification". I could be sure of my rights, and the Munchmeyers were now financially so well off, that they, as I thought, were more than just able to pay. That he lost again on poorly selling novels what he earned on the bestsellers, and that he had fallen in with bill-jobbers, causing a severe depletion of his available funds, about all of this I knew nothing. Thus, I was convinced that I could wait calmly and that I had no reason at all to pose premature, and therefore insulting, demands. Furthermore, my wife was thus completely against all forms of urging and pus.h.i.+ng in business matters, that I now also had to fear for the outward peace of my home, if I had not been as forgiving towards Munchmeyer as she wished. The publishers of colportage also maintain that, for their bookkeeping, it would be much harder and require much more time than with other publishers to prove how many regular subscribers there are. All of the time, some of them are cancelling, and new ones are joining in, therfore I was patient.
[a] I guess, the word "nicht" In the year 1891, I made the acquaintance of my current publisher F.E. Fehsenfeld from Freiburg, Breisgau. I left it up to him to publish in the form of books those works which had previously been published by Pustet in Regensburg and made an agreement with him that he would thereafter also publish those written for Munchmeyer. He instantly tackled those first ones, and they sold excellently. We were both convinced that we would not be less successful with the Munchmeyer novels, but postponed the latter, until the Pustet series would be complete. Each of the two series was supposed to consist of thirty volumes. Wherever my past work fell short of filling these volumes, I had to write more. For the Pustet series, this turned out to be about ten volumes, which I still had to deliver. This work left me no time to worry about my Munchmeyer stuff right now. It was also because of this that the unexpected news that Munchmeyer had suddenly died had to be, as far as the business was concerned, entirely indifferent to me. I only inquired who his legal successor was, and when I heard that his widow continued the business with authorisation of the other heirs, I for my part saw no reason to worry. Then, something surprising happened. Mrs. Pauline Munchmeyer sent me a messenger, who had been instructed to draw out of me, whether I might be inclined to write a new novel for her. This messenger was also an "ex-convict". I sent him away, without allowing him to successfully complete his task, not giving any special though to the reason for his errant. At this time, I did not know what I found out only much later, which was that Munchmeyers were not as splendidly to do as I thought. A family meeting had been held, and the decision had been reached that the situation should be improved by a new novel by Karl May. I had neither the time nor the inclination to write it, but decided, in case the attempt would be repeated, to enter into negotiations regardless, to find out something definite about the success of my previous novels. And the repet.i.tion of the attempt came. Mrs. Munchmeyer herself called on us in person. She visited us repeatedly. She made her request. She even offered to pay the royalties in advance. She also sent Walter, the factotum, and had him write letters. I informed them that I would not be able to deliver anything new, before the issue of the older novels was not full resolved. First of all, I simply had to know the current number of subscribers of my five novels; there had to be much more than twenty thousand by now. Mrs. Munchmeyer promised to inform me. She invited me and my wife for dinner at her place, in order to give me this information there. We came. She confessed that those twenty thousand had been reached, and even for all novels, not just one of them; but a precise calculation would have to be done first, and this would be so immensely difficult and time consuming in the colportage business. So, I should be patient. As far as my rights were concerned, they were hereby mine again, I could now fully use these novels for my own purposes. Then, I asked her to send me my ma.n.u.scripts, based on which I would have them typeset and printed. She said they had been burnt; in their place, she would send me the printed novels and would have them, as a special favour for me, bound in leather, first. This was done. A short time later, the books came in the mail; I was again in control of my works - - - so I thought! Of course, it had been impossible for me to publish them right away, since those written for Pustet had to come out first. So, I put these books aside for the time being, without being able to devote any time to an examination of their contents. I had reached my purpose, and writing a new novel was no longer up for discussion. Nothing was heard from Mrs. Munchmeyer any more. I attributed this to the fact that now those "fine gratifications" were due, the payment of which she was trying to avoid by keeping silent about it. But I did not force the issue; I had more work to do and could do without the money, if need be. I do not want to omit the fact that my wife, during all of this time, made every effort to keep me from being strict in my business affairs against Mrs. Munchmeyer. This preference of hers for Munchmeyer and his widow const.i.tutes the main reason for the otherwise incomprehensible forbearance I practised. I was just about to begin a long journey to the Orient, when I found out that Mrs. Munchmeyer wanted to sell her business. Right away, I wrote her a letter, warning her against selling my novels along with it. I explained to her everything relating to this and started my journey in upper Egypt. After I had returned from there to Cairo, I found letters awaiting me there, from which I found out that the sale had gone through in spite of my warning; the buyer's [a] name was Fischer. I did not hesitate to write to this gentleman. He answered me in a colporteur's tone that he had bought the Munchmeyer business only on account of the novels by Karl May. All the rest would not be worth anything. He would exploit this work of mine as much as he possibly could and sue me for damages, if I would obstruct him in doing so. This tone caught my attention. This was a style which is usually only used on very worthless individuals. Probably, I had been described to this Mr. Fischer, who was perfectly unknown to me, in a way which caused him to be thus disrespectful. I wrote to my wife that she should, instantly and in as much detail as possible, give me an report about this case. For this purpose, I gave her the precise route of my journey. For six weeks, I waited in Cairo, fourteen days in Beirut, several weeks in Jerusalem. I wrote and telegraphed, but in vain; no report came. Finally, I received a few lines, in which she told me that she had been to Paris, but nothing further. When in Ma.s.sawa, the capitol of Eritrea by the Red Sea, my Arabian servant brought me the mail, I was confronted with a huge pile of German newspapers, from which I, not having suspected a thing, learnt what had taken place at home in the meantime against me. Fischer had taken advantage of my absence by starting an ill.u.s.trated edition of my Munchmeyer novels, and in doing so he sounded the trumpets of advertis.e.m.e.nt in such a manner that everyone's attention had to be drawn towards this project. My name had been given, though I had written these novels under pseudonym, with only one exception, and had imposed the obligation on Munchmeyer, not to disclose this pseudonym under any circ.u.mstances. At the same time, it turned out that the novels were supposed to be published in revised versions. I became terribly scared. I wrote home and instructed a friend there, whom I could trust completely, to seek the a.s.sistance of a lawyer and to conduct my case until I would return home, if necessary even in court. [a] The original book reads "Verkaufer" This friend's name was Richard Plohn, and he was the owner of the "Sachsische Verbandstoffabrik" Plohn is now my wife. Therfore, I am not permitted to talk about her characteristics or even her outstanding qualities. The latter ones were purely pertaining to her soul. My first wife had never read any of my books. The purpose and contents of my writings was just as unknown and indifferent to her as my goals and ideals in general. But Mrs. Plohn was an enthusiastic reader of mine and had a very solemn and deep understanding for all of my hopes, wishes, and intentions. Her husband was happy about this. He saw my struggle, my tireless work, often up to three times a week all night long, no helping hand, no warm glance, no encouraging word; my soul was alone, alone, alone as always and at all times. This pained him. Through his wife, he tried to persuade mine, to at least take care of the disrupting task of answering the mail, but in vain. Then, he asked me to permit his wife to do this; this would be a great joy for her and him. I permitted these two, good people to do so. From this time on, my correspondence was in the hands of Mrs. Plohn. Thousands of readers received answers signed "Emma May", without knowing that it had not been my wife, but a sisterly helper, who had eased my burden. More and more, she worked herself into the world of my thoughts and my mail, so that finally, I could, with every confidence, leave the entire correspondence up to her. Her husband was proud of it. Almost even prouder was her mother a very hard working, down to earth woman, accustomed to a simple life, who would have liked so very much to lend a hand, if it had been possible, for she also possessed a soul which would not want to stay in the lower reaches, but was seeking to rise upwards. [a] See my footnote in chapter V. "Du" is the informal German word for "you", which is only used to address close friends, relatives, and children. Using it against anybody else would be a sign of disrespect and an insult. So, it was this friend whom I instructed to take my affairs as forcefully as possible into his hands, and he did it as well as he could. He hired a lawyer from Dresden to conduct the lawsuit and informed the entire German press that I was momentarily in Asia, but would not hesitate, after my return home, to defend myself against the intended gross violation of my rights. More could not be done for the moment, because it had been impossible for me to abort my journey. From my wife, I received no news. She was incapable of dealing with such serious business matters. But the Plohns wrote, though those letters only caught up with me in Padang, on the island of Sumatra. They contained alarming news. The press had started to write about my Munchmeyer novels, and had done this in a manner which was unfavourable for me. Rumours were spread about me, which were partially ridiculous, partially unscrupulous. The newspapers wrote that I was not in the Orient at all, but that I was hiding, on account of a malignant disease, in the iodine resort Bad Tolz, in upper Bavaria. If I had suspected that this would go on in this deceitful, hateful, and vicious manner for an entire decade, I would have interrupted my journey after all and would have returned home as quickly as possible. If I had done this, I would have been spared all this inhumane torture and pains, which I have suffered during this long time. But unfortunately, I did not know yet at this time what had happened to my novels and what had been the guiding ideas concerning me, which were going around in Munchmeyer's business and are still going around today. I believed that I could still settle the matter from afar and thought that I needed to do nothing more than to get precise information, from which the steps to be taken would have to result. Thus, I wrote home that my wife should come to Egypt with the Plohns, where I would meet them in Cairo. They came, though much later than planned, because Plohn had become ill on the way. What I found out from them did not sound favourable at all, and it furthermore struck me as very unspecific. The lawyer was still in the earliest stages of preparing the case. Fischer had declared that he would fight back with all possible means; he had bought my novels from Mrs. Munchmeyer; they were his righteously purchased property, payed for in cash, with which he could do whatever he wanted. The newspapers were biased against me. My Munchmeyer novels were described as trashy. I realised that a lawsuit against the Munchmeyers was unavoidable, and asked my wife for the doc.u.ments I would need for this. I have already said that I had kept Munchmeyer's letters. Their contents had const.i.tuted such strong evidence in a lawsuit against Munchmeyer that I simply had to win it. These letters were, together with other thing of equal importance, kept in a specific drawer of my desk. Before my departure, I had especially informed my wife about this drawer and its contents, I had especially explained the purpose of the letters and had instructed her to make sure that not even the smallest piece of paper would get lost. When I now in Cairo asked her about these doc.u.ments, she rea.s.sured me that they were still lying there just as I had entrusted them to her. n.o.body had touched them. This calmed me down, because it meant a sure victory in the lawsuit. When my wife a.s.sured me of this, Mrs. Plohn was with us and heard it. She gave her an astonished look, but said nothing. At this time, I did not particularly notice this; but later, remembering this astonished, wide-eyed, disapproving look, I knew just too well what it was meant to say. What had happened was that one evening my wife had come to Mrs. Plohn and had told her that she had just burnt our marriage certificate, on account of the omen it const.i.tuted. And some time later, she had told her in the same laughing manner that she had now also taken the doc.u.ments from the desk drawer and had burnt them; by this, she wanted to prevent me from suing the Munchmeyers. Mrs. Plohn had been horrified by this, but was unable to change the fait accompli. Now, when she had to listen to this a.s.surance of my wife that the letters still existed untouched, the first rupture of that internal split occurred in her, which did not become externally evident until nothing could be kept secret any more. We travelled to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and returned home via Constantinople, Greece, and Italy. During this time, my wife had, upon repeated questions, always stuck to her story that the doc.u.ments were still lying, perfectly unharmed, in the drawer in question. She finally became angry and refused to permit any further mentioning of the subject. But when I came home and the first thing I did was to go to desk, I found the drawer - - - empty! Being held responsible for this, she declared that she had indeed burnt and destroyed the letters. She had always been a friend of the Munchmeyers and still was their friend today. Though she knew that I was right, she would not stand for me suing the Munchmeyers. Therefore, she had burnt the papers. You can imagine how I felt, but I controlled myself and did what I was already in the habit of doing for many years in such cases: I was quiet, took my hat, and left. In the meantime, the attacks in the press against me had been getting more and more numerous and direct. I was accused of having written piously and indecently at the same time. I had a look at the novels, which Mrs. Munchmeyer had bound for me, and found that they diverged from my original ma.n.u.scripts, they had been changed. So, that was why the ma.n.u.scripts had been burnt, instead of being preserved for me! I was not supposed to be able to prove the changes! The first thing I did was that I informed the press of this and asked them to wait for the decision of the court. Then, I most quickly filed the complaint. I did not want to pursue the matter in a civil, but rather a criminal trial, but met with such an opposition from my wife in this that I gave it up. I sought advice from several lawyers, not just in Dresden, but also in Berlin and elsewhere. I would have like so much to sue them directly on account of the "abysmal indecencies", I had been accused of, but I was a.s.sured unanimously that this was impossible. A suit could not be concerned with abstract concepts, but would have to be based on material reason. Most of all, I would have to prove that I was the legitimate owner of the novels concerned, and that I therefore had the right to sue. The best thing would be to sue for a "rendering of the account". This was done. It was about at this time that the buyer of Munchmeyer's business, Mr. Fischer, called on me. I had no reasonable reason for sending him away; he was allowed to enter. The conversation was highly interesting, from a psychological point of view as well as concerning the lawsuit. Fischer did not at all conceal the fact that he knew that I had been to prison. He remarked that whoever had such a skeleton in his closet would do very well to refrain from going to court, otherwise the matter might very easily come out differently than one might think. My novels would now be his property. They had already been changed before, and now he would have them rewritten once more, just as it would please him. If I would conduct a lawsuit against him, this could take more than ten years; but until then, I would be long since ruined. But he had come to extend his hand to me, to avoid all this trouble. I was supposed to pay him seventy thousand marks, then he would give my novels up and surrender them to me with all rights included. Then, it would be easy for me to silence the entire excitement of the press against me with a single stroke. He would be offering me his help in this. He would know more than I would suspect. He knew the entire Munchmeyer business. He had been told everything. But he could not give the rights up for less than seventy thousand marks, since he had payed one hundred and seventy-five thousand marks. It goes without saying that I did not go along with this suggestion. I made clear to him that I would not give a single pfennig and that I was firmly resolved to sue. So, he wanted to know whom I would sue, him or Munchmeyer's widow. He would advise me to do the latter, because, in this case, he could probably testify in my favour, for he was not at all satisfied with this woman, but was rather constantly arguing with her. After this, he left with the warning that I should be so very careful concerning my prior convictions. I was willing to sue Mrs. Munchmeyer. But my wife and, probably as a consequence of this, my lawyer also urged me to refrain from this. Thus, Fischer was sued. But as it seemed, the widow did not feel like having herself excluded from this legal action. She joined in as a co-intervener [a] and has remained my opponent up to this day. I succeeded in obtaining an injunction against Fischer, which prohibited him from continuing to print my novels. He was only allowed to complete the series. Being in this situation, which was very critical for him, he came to talk to my lawyer and complained about the loss he was going to suffer on account of this; it would already amount to forty thousand marks. If this would not stop, he would even have to use very different means to defend himself than he had used up to now, and he would have to destroy me in the eyes of all of Germany by publis.h.i.+ng my prior convictions in all the newspapers. When my lawyer informed me of this threat, it all became so very clear to me; I started to comprehend and felt obliged to probe this terrain. A meeting between Fischer and myself was arranged, in a private room of a wine-tavern, just the two of us. There, he talked openly. He told me everything he had found out from the Munchmeyers about me and my novels during the negotiation of the sale. I found out about their entire battle plan, of which I did not have a clue before. He had been let to believe that I had been to prison for having had intimate contact with schoolgirls as a teacher. This would fit perfectly with the allegations in the newspapers that I had written indecent novels. This only had to be published, then I would be destroyed forever. Now, I was a famous man and would have to avoid such publications; they knew this just as well I did. What I had agreed upon with Munchmeyer concerning my novels would be irrelevant. Munchmeyer was dead. It would all just depend on who would have to testify under oath. And they would know how to make sure that May would not get this opportunity. His prior convictions would be the best help there could be for this. He would only have to be threatened with their publication, then he would surely give up every lawsuit. Two lines written to him are enough, and he will be quiet. "Him, we've got in our hands!" [a] Intervener: A third party in a civil trial aside from the plaintiff and the defendant. German law further distinguishes between a "Hauptintervenient" In this manner, they had talked to Fischer, and this persuaded him to buy the business. Of this, he a.s.sured me. That my novels had been altered, he knew. He only did not know precisely by whom. Probably by Walter. After all, he had nothing else to do than these kinds of things, and he also had to read the proof sheets. And this was not a difficult task at all and could be done very quickly. Only one word would have to be changed or a few words would have to be added, and already the "indecency" is there, without which such novels are quite inconceivable. I would be able to prove these changes quite easily; I would only have to present my original ma.n.u.scripts. "But they have been burnt!" I interjected. But Fischer denied this quite decisively. He insisted that they were still there. He could get them for me, though, of course, he would not do so under the present conditions, with me being his opponent in a lawsuit and ruining him with my injunction. He could only help me and testify in my favour, if I would drop this injunction and settle with him. This conversation was infinitely important to me. I had to be careful. I wondered, whether I could trust him. If the original ma.n.u.scripts were really still there, I would indeed been able to silence all accusations against me, as Fischer had said, with a single stroke. But he might have intended to deceive me, or he might have been deceived himself. I was not allowed to decide too hastily; I had to observe and to think, especially since this turn of events in my affairs occurred at a time in which severe internal struggles kept me thus busy that I was unable to find either time or s.p.a.ce for other things. This was the time of my divorce. To be honest, I very much tend towards the Catholic view of marriage, regarding it as a sacrament. If I would not be of this opinion, I would have taken this step much sooner and not only when my health, my life, and my entire internal and external existence was at stake. This step has been held against me to a high degree, and very unjustly so. Catholic critics, who, instead of staying on a factual basis, let their attacks wander over into the personal, have accused me in the same breath of being a Protestant and of having divorced my wife. How unlogical! It is because I am regarded as a Protestant that n.o.body has the right to hold that second fact against me. To every even just mildly decent person, a divorce is a matter which is most naturally treated with discretion. But mine was dragged through the newspapers, supplemented with the most disgusting marginal glosses, and abused for the most outrageous speculations. I want to skip all of this here, to remark on this, if I should be forced to do so, in another place. This time was not just for me, but also for Mrs. Plohn, a time of almost deadly afflictions, because it deprived her of her husband, whom she loved with a self-sacrifice, as rarely a man was ever loved. I have already said that Plohn had become ill on the journey to Egypt. He only seemed to recover. The malady was repeated, after he had returned home. One year later, death came. Mrs. Plohn almost collapsed. If it had not been for her mother, she would have surely died, following her husband. Fortunately, the correspondence she conducted for me with my readers also offered her the spiritual relief and support she required. She owned two rented houses in Dresden, which she would have liked to sell, to be able to buy a piece of land in the country, belonging to the village Niedersedlitz, which had been offered to her. Fischer had moved his printing-plant there. His private apartment was also there. Mrs. Plohn asked me to accompany her on a visit of this lot, and once we happened to be in Niedersedlitz, the idea came most naturally to let Fischer know about it. He invited us to his private apartment, and there a negotiation evolved which led to a settlement the day after. I want to make it as brief as possible. Fischer complained that, in buying the Munchmeyer business, he had degraded himself to the level of a "trashy publisher"; he a.s.sured us that he was yearning to get out of this, and he insisted that I could a.s.sist him in this like n.o.body else. Of the latter, I was also convinced. He had purchased the altered novels, without Mrs. Munchmeyer having the right to sell them to him. If he made sure that my original ma.n.u.scripts were returned to me, he could drop the trashy stuff and publish my originals in their place; this would help him and me as well; he would no longer be a trashy publisher, and I would be able to prove that I had not written anything indecent. This was the basic idea of the settlement, and when we signed it, I was convinced that all disputes were resolved. At this time, Fischer attested to me publicly in the newspapers that the indecent pa.s.sages of my Munchmeyer novels _were_not_the_product_of_my_pen,_ _but_rather_had_been_put_in_by_a_third_party._ But unfortunately, my hopes turned out to be deceptive. Fischer was unable to get my original ma.n.u.scripts; they did not exist any more; they had really been destroyed. So, it had been impossible for him to transform from a "trashy publisher", as he described himself in a letter to me, into a book publisher. He did make the attempt, though, to obtain an original novel even without my original ma.n.u.scripts, in order to be able to drop the trash then, but I had to deny him the help, he demanded from me in this. What he demanded from me was to change the trash back into its former, impeccable version just based on my memory; but this was, considering the huge amount of about thirty thousand pages, tightly filled with text, an absolute impossibility. But he insisted on his contract, on our settlement, and though he was unable to do as he had promised, I was still supposed to do everything, which was, even if for no other reason than him, impossible. From this resulted a new disagreement and a new struggle, which extended beyond his death and was only by his heirs brought to a peaceful conclusion. They saw things clearer than he did, and they were of calm, unbiased minds. They were experts, which is to say: lawyers, merchants, owners of printing-plants and bookbinderies. They agreed on the following declaration:
"In a lawsuit between Mr. Karl May and the heirs of Mr.
Adalbert Fischer, the heirs of Mr. Fischer have declared that
the novels by the author Karl May, published by the company
of H.G. Munchmeyer, have in the course of time been altered
by means of additions and variations by a third party to such
an extent that in their present form, they can no longer be
regarded as Karl May's creation. Mr. May has been authorised
to publish this declaration.
"Dresden, October 1907."
This declaration is signed by the widow Mrs. Elisabeth Fischer, the merchant Arthur Schubert, the owner of a printing-plant Otto Fischer, the owner of a bookbindery Alfred Sperling, the lawyer Trummler, the lawyer Bernstein, the lawyer Dr. Elb. Irresponsible people have pretended that this declaration had only been made by children and mentally incompetent persons. From this, you can also see with what kinds of weapons I am being attacked. But for me, the section of my Munchmeyer trial dealing with Fischer has been closed by this. But the section dealing with Pauline Munchmeyer still exists. I now have to turn to her in the following. I even dare to start this section with the plan I found out from Fischer, which was:
"May has been to prison. He has to keep this a secret. We
have him in our hands. Two lines are enough, and he will be
quiet. If he sues us, we will destroy him by publis.h.i.+ng his
prior convictions in all newspapers throughout Germany. What
May has agreed upon with Munchmeyer is irrelevant. What
matters is, who will get the opportunity to testify under
oath. And we will know how to make sure that May will not
get this opportunity."
By no means, Fischer has only talked about this plan in private, but he also testified about this, putting it on record, and it had been incessantly confirmed in the course of the legal dispute, which now already lasts for nine years. I do not want to talk here about those things which the lawyer Dr. Gerlach, in the name of his client Pauline Munchmeyer, has a.s.serted and denied contrary to the truth. But he has portrayed me right from the start as a person who is to the highest degree unqualified for taking the oath. I simply cannot list all those offensive swear-words here he has showered me with for as long as the last nine years and continues to do so without me being able to have him punished for this, because, as a lawyer, he is protected by the very same article of the law which forces me to put up with liberties from him which no other person would ever take. Being repeatedly admonished by the judges and asked to answer for himself by other lawyers, he nevertheless remains faithful to this speciality of his. To carry out the Munchmeyers' plan, it was first of all necessary to obtain my criminal records. For this purpose an unfounded complaint for gross insult was issued, which was instantly retracted as soon as the purpose had been reached. From that time on, more or less allusive notes appeared in the newspapers about my past. "I know even more!" one of them wrote; "You would know what I mean, wouldn't you, Mr. May?" another one asked. The "destruction" began. But the spiritus rector, the real perpetrator, always remained cleverly hidden in the shadows; he never showed himself; he always reached his ends through other persons. The area of his work reaches far beyond his professional duties, his correspondence is very extensive, concerning almost exclusively Karl May. He is in intimate contact with all of my literary opponents, and wherever a paper is writing about me, a letter by him or one of his confidants is sure to follow. And almost everywhere, they believe him. They believe him just as Cardauns used to believe this liar who told him so convincingly that the Munchmeyer novels had been written by me precisely as they had been printed. This gentleman Dr. Hermann Cardauns is inseparably connected with this very dark and very ugly chapter of the contemporary history of literature which is referred to as "Karl-May-persecution". He did not want to have it any other way. There, he stands in close union with people he otherwise does not belong to. This is also how he wanted it to be. His crus.h.i.+ng style, his infallible way of choosing his words, his "abysmal" or "evident" pleonasms became a model for others, especially for those who construct those figurative nooses around my neck, to "whip me out of the Germen arts". But the entire conglomeration of what he has spoken and written in lectures and newspapers against me, const.i.tutes by no means a st.u.r.dy column, which no one would be able to shake, but rather a paper kite in the shape of a dragon, compiled from lots of vague circ.u.mstantial evidence, the rope of which n.o.body wants to hold any more aside from Mr. Cardauns himself. It surely takes a lot of blind faith, to think like him that my "indecencies" could also be proven by other means than only by the presentation of my original ma.n.u.scripts. Just making a lot of words will not do it; a.s.sertions will also remain unsuccessful, as long as they are not proven. Though there is a lot to be read in Cardauns's essays against me about files, doc.u.ments, and other evidence, he claims to possess proving my guild, I have not yet been shown a single official file and no single doc.u.ment. As it seems, this gentleman owns an older printed copy by Munchmeyer and a later edition by Fischer and presumes the first one to be a literal copy of my original. But I regard it as truly inconceivable that a "main or chief editor" could be thus mistaken. I am just too willing to consent that he has no idea what kinds of things are commonly practised by a notorious publisher of trash and colportage and what kind of a swindle this entire business is, but this does not excuse, but rather incriminate, him, because not knowing this, he also should not take the liberty of drawing conclusions from the reasoning of the filthy colportage which may only be dawn from the reasoning of honourable people. Fischer could only enjoy the tremendous success of the rewritten trashy novels thanks to the excessively loud roll of the drums of Mr. Cardauns. Even the most incompetent politician knows that these kinds of things can only be killed by silence and not by gongs and tomtoms. But I, who was supposed to be struck dead by these tomtoms, these speeches and newspaper articles, have been rendered unable by this to remove this trash entirely from the face of this world as I had intended. My intentions were good; but since Mr. Cardauns supported my opponents by keeping me from carrying out those intentions, he has done Munchmeyer's colportage a service, for which they will always think gratefully of him. During all of this long time until now, he has been their faithful champion; whether he had planed it this way or not, the effect remains the same. The second champion for Munchmeyer's cause, ranking highly above the first one, even mentally, is the former social democrat Mr. Rudolf Lebius in Charlottenburg, who had seceded from the Christian church. Concerning him, I will quote a pa.s.sage from my written statements to the fourth criminal division of the Royal Superior Court III in Berlin: In the year 1902, I was travelling in the South, and at the Lake Garda, the mail from home caught up with me, containing among others a letter by a certain Lebius, who described himself in a rather exuberant manner as a man who intimately knew and admired my work, and he made the request to be permitted to visit me at some time. This exuberance instantly arose my suspicion. "He wants money, nothing else", I said to myself. I replied to him that I was not at home and that I therefore was unable to invite him. In answer to this, he wrote to me on April the 7th, 1904: "Dear Sir! "As early as one and a half years ago, I had attempted to get in contact with you, to which the enclosed card will serve as evidence. In the meantime, I have published a new newspaper, here, which has won great popularity. Could you be persuaded to write something for my paper? Something biographical perhaps, on the way you work, or on such details which might interest the German readers.h.i.+p of Karl May. I would also like to interview you. _"With_outstanding_admiration_ "Rudolf Lebius, publisher and editor." So, Lebius had carefully kept my card all this time, to gain entrance into my house. He had signed his letter "with outstanding admiration". Again, I said to myself: "He only wants money." The a.s.sertion that his new newspaper had "won great popularity" was not the truth. I was to be lured in by this. Such a visitor must not be turned away, especially when he comes armed with a newspaper, however small it may be, or else he will get even. Thus, I wrote to him that he would be allowed to come, and he answered on April the 28th: "Many thanks for your kind letter. Of course, I am happy to accept your friendly invitation. Unless you will give me another time, I will come to see you on Monday, May the 2nd, at three o'clock (departure at 3:31). _"With_great_respect_and_admiration_ "Rudolf Lebius." He came. But I did not allow him to interview me. I did not put up with that. My wife, who had opened the door for him, had only showed him to me under the condition that absolutely nothing would be published. He gave his word on this, first to her and then also to me. He stayed for coffee, and he stayed until after dinner. He spoke very much; he spoke almost incessantly. I remained intentionally silent. I only said what was unavoidable.
