Karl May (1974)

The film is set in Germany at the turn of the century (i.e., around 1900). The Saxon writer Karl May is planning a trip around the world. In schools, he speaks about his purported past travels across the American continent and the Orient. He always claims that he experienced all the adventures he describes himself. His popularity is at its peak, and numerous letters from enthusiastic readers reach him. May’s main problems, however, are with Pauline Münchmeyer, the widow of publisher Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer, and the radical journalist Rudolf Lebius, who attacks and slanders him relentlessly and wants to have his writings placed on the index. May nevertheless sets off on his world trip, which is supposed to take him to Cairo, then via India to Ceylon and Sumatra. Postcards to his publisher and friends are intended to prove that he really visited these places. But it is all to no avail—they consider him a braggart and a liar. He is said not to have experienced the adventures he recounts himself, but to have copied them from elsewhere. It also comes to light that May wrote texts under a pseudonym. Alongside Lebius, the widow Münchmeyer proves to be a driving force in the matter. When accusations from home reach May, he cuts his world trip short. But the publisher Fischer knows about May’s pseudonymous serial fiction and tries to put the author under pressure. Legal disputes ensue. Meanwhile, Lebius wants to undermine May’s reputation permanently by exposing his past. Lebius loses one court case, but does not give up. In further trials, details from May’s past are used against him. May’s private life also becomes deeply turbulent. He divorces his wife Emma and marries his secretary, Klara Plöhn. Emma is a childhood friend of Pauline Münchmeyer, and the two now join forces against her ex-husband. During the legal proceedings, May’s home is searched, bringing his will as well as contracts and receipts to light. Between the various trials, May writes a new book with the programmatic title Et in terra pax (And Peace on Earth). But the publisher, who has in mind a colonialist story glorifying Germany, is dissatisfied with the work and has an anonymous co-author finish it. May feels a deep spiritual kinship with his friend, the painter Sascha Schneider, who paints the covers of his books. After many years, May wins his cases, and his fiercest enemy, Rudolf Lebius, is convicted in late 1911. Shortly before his death, May gives a lecture at Vienna’s Sophiensaal titled “Upward into the Realm of Noble Human Beings.” The audience is enthusiastic; among them is a certain Adolf Hitler. A little later, May dies in his Saxon homeland.