Karl May

Also known as D. Jam, Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont, Ramon Diaz de la Escosura, Emma Pollmer, Karl Hohenthal, Ernst von Linden, Hobble-Frank, Franz Langer

German author (1842–1912)

AI overview

Karl May was a German author from the 19th and early 20th centuries who wrote adventure novels that became enormously popular in Germany and beyond. His works, particularly those featuring the character Old Shatterhand in the American West and the Middle East, made him one of the most widely read authors of his time and left a lasting impact on how many Europeans imagined distant cultures and places.

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Film & TV

Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Germany

Karl Friedrich May was a German writer best known for his adventure novels set in the American Old West. His main protagonists are Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. May set similar books in the Orient and Middle East (in which the main protagonists were Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi Halef Omar), Latin America and Germany. May also wrote poetry, a play, and composed music; he was a proficient player of…

via TMDB

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Karl
Family name: May
Gender: male
Citizenship: Kingdom of Saxony
Place of birth: Hohenstein-Ernstthal
Place of death: Radebeul
Occupation: writer
Languages spoken: German
Native language: German
Notable work: Winnetou
Image: Karl May edit.jpg
Work location: Dresden
Said to be same as: Old Shatterhand

Show 13 more facts

topic's main category: Category:Karl May
Commons category: Karl May
date of birth: 1842-02-25
date of death: 1912-03-30
Commons gallery: Karl May
Commons Creator page: Karl May
birth name: Karl Friedrich May
writing language: German
start of work period: 1881-00-00
P8168: Bubong
related category: Category:Works by Karl May
name in native language: Karl May
archives at: Karl May Museum Radebeul

Sources (11)

via Wikidata · CC0

Works in European collections

23 objects attributed to Karl May, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

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Encyclopedic overview

Karl Friedrich May (/maɪ/ MY, German: [kaʁl ˈmaɪ] ; 25 February 1842 – 30 March 1912) was a German author known for writing often in first-person narrative about travels and adventures, mostly set in the American Old West or the Orient and Middle East, but also in Latin America, China and within Germany. For a time he insisted that he actually had travelled to the West and was called Old Shatterhand there, while in the Ottoman Empire he was called Kara Ben Nemsi, and posed in costumes.

May is one of the best-selling German writers of all time, with about 200 million copies sold worldwide. A series of Karl May film adaptations was successful in the 1960s.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Karl May” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.