[Buddha-l] Re:American Mahayana/British Theravada?

[Joy Vriens]

Robert Morrison wrote:

> For what its worth, German interest in cowboy and Indian novels was started
> by a 19th cent. German writer called Karl May.  He wrote tons of them and
> was extremely popular. Hitler is said to have devoured his books (perhaps he
> picked up some ideas from them!).

Karl May seems indeed to have been inspired by Fennimore Cooper and the 
man's life story appears to be a novel too. 
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/karlmay.htm

I never thought I would share things with Hitler, but I devoured his 
books too in my early youth.

"In his diary, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1976) Albert Speer mentions, 
that Hitler would lean on Karl May as proof that 'it was not necessary 
to know the desert in order to direct troops in the African theater of 
war... it wasn't necessary to travel in order to know the world.' 
According to Speer, 'Hitler was wont to say that he had always been 
deeply impressed by the tactical finesse and circumspection that Karl 
May conferred upon his character Winnetou.' Such man was the very model 
of a company commander. Hitler added that during his reading hours at 
night, May's stories gave him courage like works of philosophy or the 
Bible for others. He had attended May's fatal lecture in Vienna in 1912. 
In the middle of World War II May's Winnetou was printed in 300,000 
copies to be delivered for German soldiers. For Martin Bormann Hitler 
told: "I used to read him by candle-light, or by moonlight with the help 
if a huge magnifying glass." (from Hitler's Table Talks, 1953). This 
admiration condemned May for some time to the fate of Richard Wagner, 
whose music wasn't publicly performed in Israel for years because Hitler 
had praised it."

Joy