Andreas Barth, a member of the Silberbüchse association, will reveal how readers managed to access the works of Karl May, a native of the Ore Mountains, even though his books were banned in East Germany.

📅 Date: March 7, 2025
🕒 Time: 5:00 PM
📍 Venue: Senator Přemysl Rabas’s Office, Labuť House, 3rd Floor, Ruská 17, Chomutov

Karl May, the creator of timeless stories about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, was considered ideologically dangerous in East Germany. Andreas Barth, who grew up in Saxony during the 1950s and 1960s, recalls how May’s books were unavailable in libraries and bookstores. Nevertheless, May’s heroes captured the hearts of readers – his stories circulated secretly, were loaned among friends, and became symbols of freedom, adventure, and justice.

Topics covered in the lecture:

• How communist censorship dealt with Karl May’s works and why he was labeled an unsuitable author.
• How May’s popularity spread despite bans and ideological suppression.
• Why May’s ideals of justice, tolerance, and understanding posed a threat to the GDR’s ideology.
• Personal stories from Andreas Barth about discovering May’s works in secret and with great determination.

Admission: Free (registration required)
Language: Lecture in English, translated into Czech by Michal Foit

Andreas Barth was born in 1957 in Lichtenstein/Saxony and grew up in Kuhschnappel, close to Karl May’s hometown. As a child, he was an avid reader of adventure and historical novels, counting Dumas, Cooper, Gerstäcker, Sealsfield, Stevenson, Verne, and Defoe among his favorites. Since Karl May’s books were unavailable in the GDR, Barth read them secretly whenever relatives could borrow copies from acquaintances. The harder it became to access May’s books, the greater his desire to read them.

As a young librarian at the German Library in Leipzig, Barth gained access to Western secondary literature and studied Karl May’s life and impact intensively. Following the political changes in the GDR and the so-called May Renaissance, he began supporting the Karl-May-Haus in Hohenstein-Ernstthal and the Karl-May-Museum in Radebeul. In 2006, he became one of the founding members of the Silberbüchse Association, where he remains active today.

Barth continues to be fascinated by May’s imagination and his unconventional approach to the great questions of humanity – good and evil, war and peace, justice, tolerance, and mutual understanding – all of which remain relevant today.

This lecture is part of the German-Czech-Canadian artistic initiative Try Walking in May Shoes, inspired by Karl May’s imagination, and is included in the official program of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025.