Karl May’s epic Traveler Tales entered the public domain in 1963 and we are proud to offer these tomes in e-pub format here. The year 1963 was a pivotal moment in time, a crucial instance that would realize Karl May’s true desire. Read his thoughts and you will soon understand the purpose of his writing, for Karl May wrote: “A brightness filled the space between the four confining walls of my cell and they opened up. At first I felt, then saw and finally I understood the secret, the intimate connections between the minuscule and the macrocosm, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the mind, the finite and the infinite. It was now that I started to comprehend the deepest meanings of my grandmother’s dear, old fables. For whole nights I lay awake and pondered. I was chained to the deepest, lowest and most despised Ardistan and I sent all my thoughts up to the bright and free Jinnistan. I imagined myself to be the lost human soul that could not be found unless it finds itself. One cannot find one’s true self in lofty Jinnistan, one can only find it down here, in Ardistan, among earthly suffering, in the torment of mankind, eating the swill that the prodigal son ate, as mentioned in that biblical parable. My imagination started to arrange what I was searching for into a tangible shape so that I could seize and hold onto it. It dwelled and breathed within me. And not just in me but also outside of me, omnipresent, in every human being, even in the entire human race like one universal entity.”

And yet his tales, his parables that he desired to tell to the world, were to be bound for fifty more years after his death. Fifty years during which his writings were violated by those whose interests were not the lost human soul but the wealth his writings could generate. Even now his original handwritten pages are put up for auction so that the last penny can be squeezed from them. This is quite contrary to Karl May’s intent for he wrote:

“I want my readers to stop regarding life as a merely material existence. This view is a prison for them, beyond the walls of which they are unable to see, to behold the sunny, free, wide land.”

In the third volume of his most famous tale “Winnetou” he wrote these prophetic lines:

“This was how the Apache’s testament had disappeared, just as its author had passed away and just like the Indian people will disappear. They were richly provided for, but were not allowed to reach their full potential. Just like the shreds of the testament were scattered to the winds, so too does the red man drift across the far expanses that once belonged to him.”

Might Karl May have foreseen what would happen to his own writings? It is a question we should ponder for it is greed that drives this world and whilst this vice governs the heart of humanity, there is little hope that the lost human soul will be found.

But we must take heart, we must strive to seek what we have lost and to help us do that, we offer Karl May’s original writings to the English speaking world – not for profit or financial gain – not for fame or glory – but for the joy of finding that which was lost. May you also enjoy the rediscovery of the lost soul of mankind.