Authors, German -- 19th century -- Biography; May, Karl Friedrich, 1842-1912
Thus, the first edition of Karl May's autobiography could only
reach a few hundred people, probably mostly among German speaking
readers outside of Germany, e.g. in Austria, where the injunction
of the German court did not apply. About three month prior to
his death, Karl May wrote to his publisher: "Concerning `My Life
and My Efforts' I am willing to do your bidding. I will tackle
it." Whether Karl May rewrote some parts of his autobiography, is
uncertain, but very soon after his death, his publisher announced
that an abridged version would soon be available. Four month
after Karl May's death, this abridged version was published. It
did not just omit the passages about Rudolf Lebius, but much more,
and it even added texts taken from other autobiographical writings
by Karl May. This adaptation is credited to Karl May's widow and
E.A. Schmid (1884-1951). Little more than a month had passed
before someone else, the lawyer Oskar Gerlach, felt insulted by
this version and obtained an injunction against its publication.
The publisher reacted by printing new, mostly blank, versions of
those two pages Gerlach had objected against, instructing
booksellers to rip out the offending pages and to glue the new
ones in. In December of 1912, the lawsuit was settled, and the
remaining copies of the adaptation could be sold with all of its
pages, but a new edition would have to be changed. This third,
further abridged edition was published in 1914 by E.A. Schmid. In
early 1917, a 34th volume was added to the series of Karl May's
collected works, of which 33 volumes had been published in the
author's lifetime. This 34th volume is titled "Ich" <I>. It
contains another abridged version of the autobiography as well as
a few other texts, mostly about, but not by, Karl May. By 1995,
this book had gone through 39 editions, in which the text of the
autobiography had again been revised several times, though the
later revisions aimed at a partial restoration of the original
text. The compilation of other texts contained in this volume
also differs in the various editions. Even the edition of 1995
still omits a large passage (at least 36 pages in the first
edition) about Rudolf Lebius. It also moves two passages which
had been omitted from the seventh chapter in previous editions to
an appendix. In the first one of these passages, Karl May writes
about his views on plagiarism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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