I just want to say Germans can be an outlier regarding European/Indigenous interactions. They have had this weird on again off again fascination with Indigenous America sparked by a novelist that as near I can remember never traveled to North America. I find it simultaneously endearing, weird, and funny.
I actually had one old Polish friend who grew up with these books … he died years ago but he was born in the 1920s in western Poland in a Germanic area … fascinating guy who lived, fought and survived the Second World War fighting with the resistance and for the allies … after the war he immigrated to Canada and lived his life here … but he also had run ins where at the start of the war, he actually fought for the German army because he was forced to … he had weird stories of being in the middle of everything, and his family could never really figure out if he was pro-fascist, anti-fascist, pro-communist, anti-communist … or just some kid who did his best to just survive the war (he was 13 when the fighting started and he spent his time as a teen fighting and surviving).
He was fun because whenever we met he called me Winnetou (pronounced ‘Vee-Nah-Two’) … the main Indian character from Karl May’s books.
Haven’t thought of my old friend for years … thanks for the reminder.
I just want to say Germans can be an outlier regarding European/Indigenous interactions. They have had this weird on again off again fascination with Indigenous America sparked by a novelist that as near I can remember never traveled to North America. I find it simultaneously endearing, weird, and funny.
lol … Karl May … a German writer who wrote a bunch of fanciful made up material in the late 1800s early 1900s about Indians in North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May
I actually had one old Polish friend who grew up with these books … he died years ago but he was born in the 1920s in western Poland in a Germanic area … fascinating guy who lived, fought and survived the Second World War fighting with the resistance and for the allies … after the war he immigrated to Canada and lived his life here … but he also had run ins where at the start of the war, he actually fought for the German army because he was forced to … he had weird stories of being in the middle of everything, and his family could never really figure out if he was pro-fascist, anti-fascist, pro-communist, anti-communist … or just some kid who did his best to just survive the war (he was 13 when the fighting started and he spent his time as a teen fighting and surviving).
He was fun because whenever we met he called me Winnetou (pronounced ‘Vee-Nah-Two’) … the main Indian character from Karl May’s books.
Haven’t thought of my old friend for years … thanks for the reminder.