Imagining "Indianer": Karl May's Winnetou and Germans' Enduring Fantasies about Native Americans

This thesis examines German stereotypes and feelings of affinity for Native Americans in the New Imperial period by looking to the Winnetou trilogy, a massively popular series of novels produced by Karl May (1842–1912). By evaluating a history of German fantasies about Native Americans and offering literary analysis of May's text, I theorize that as colonial ventures became increasingly possible for the unified German state, Germans' "noble Indianer" stereotypes could also act as a model for idealized conqueror-conquered relations.