The adventures of the hero created at the end of the 19th century and ultra-well across the Rhine had been reissued on the occasion of the release of a film. The publishing house came back, explaining that they conveyed “an imaginary romanticized and full of shots”.
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To want to extinguish a controversy, we sometimes make it start again. The German publishing house Ravensburger learned at its expense after having withdrawn from its catalog two albums for children with Winnetou hero, this imaginary apache created at the end of the 19th e century by the novelist Karl May (1842-1912) and ultra-well across the Rhine.
published to accompany the film Der Junge Häuptling Winnetou (“The young chef Winnetou”), directed by Mike Marzuk and released at the cinema on August 11, the two works made only a flash passage in bookstores. Due to “many negative feedback”, the publishing house decided after only a few days to no longer offer them for sale, explaining that they conveyed “an imaginary romanticized and full of clichés”, unrelated to the real story of “the oppression of the native peoples”. Monday, August 22, the boss of Ravensburger, Clemens Meier, assured that “[s] we intend to injure anyone”, adding that his house wanted to be “very attentive to the question of diversity and cultural appropriation “.
” Wokist “hysteria”
Far from calming the spirits, the decision to withdraw the two books from the sale was very strongly criticized. For the Conservative Tabloid Bild, Ravensburger editions capitulated before “Wokist hysteria”. “This recalls the period of Stalinism, when the adventures of Winnetou could only circulate under the mantle,” also indignant Hubertus Knabe, the former director of the Hohenschönhausen Memorial, seat of the central prison of the stasi of the time from East Germany.