[a] This refers to a series of stories which were first published in a magazine for boys, published by Wilhelm Spemann, and were later collected in several books, which were published by a company called "Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft".
As mentioned before, my "traveller's tales" have to rise among the Arabs from the desert up to the Jebel Marah Durimeh and among the American Indians from the jungle and the prairie up to the Mount Winnetou. On this path, the reader shall develop from a low anima-person up to the realization of what it means to be a nobly spirited person. At the same time, he shall experience how the anima transforms on this path into a soul and a mind. Therefore, these tales start in the first volume in the "desert". In the desert, i.e. in the nothingness, in complete ignorance about everything which concerns the anima, the soul, and the mind. Stepping out into the desert and opening his eyes, the first thing my Kara Ben Nemsi, the first person narrator, the "self", mankind's great question, gets to see is a strange, little fellow, who is riding towards him on a large horse, has invented a long, famous name for himself, and even maintains that he was a Hadji, though he finally has to admit that he has never been to one of the holy cities of Islam, where the honourable title of a Hadji is obtained. You see, that I am dressing up a genuinely German, and therefore domestic, psychological riddle into a foreign, oriental garment, to make it more interesting and to be able to solve it in a more understandable manner. This is what I mean when I maintain that all of these traveller's tales have to be interpreted as parables, i.e. figuratively or symbolically. There is no mysticism or anything similar involved. My symbols are so clear, so transparent, that nothing mystical can hide behind them at all.
This Hadji, who calls himself Hadji Halef Omar and adds even his father and grandfathers' names with the title Hadji to his own, symbolises the human anima, which pretends to be the soul or even the mind, without even knowing what a soul or a mind really is. This is a daily occurrence among us, not just in ordinary life, but also among learned people, but there such a blindness towards this mistake that I have to resort to Arabian characters and Arabian conditions to let the blind eyes see. Therefore, I send this Halef to Mecca in one of the very first chapters, which transforms his lie into the truth, because he is now really a Hadji, and then, immediately afterwards, I let him get acquainted with his "soul" -- -- -- Hannah [a], his wife!
[a] This is a misspelling in the original text. The character is actually called Hanneh.
I hope that this example, which I take from my very first volume, says clearly what I want and how my books have to be read, to get to know their real contents. Let me follow it up with a second example: Kara Ben Nemsi is with the Persian tribe of the Jamikun. This tribe is to be destroyed by the people of the Sillan. Then, the ustad, the leader of the Jamikun, sends a messenger to the shah, to ask him for help. This messenger has not even reached the shah yet, when he meets with the shah's hosts, who are telling him that they have been sent by the shah to help the Jamikun. Thus, the shah had granted the ustad's request, even before it has reached him. But the shah represents God, and thus, I interpret by this tale the Christian teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:8: "Your father knows what you require, before you ask him!" Furthermore, the ustad is nobody else but Karl May, and the people of Jamikun are his readers, which are to be destroyed by the Sillan. So, I am telling purely German events in a Persian disguise and render them by these means understandable for friends and enemies alike. Is this not a parable? Not symbolic? It certainly is! And could it be mystic? Not in the very least! It is so obviously a parable and so little mystic that, to be honest, everybody who would deny the former and suppose the latter would seem to me like a person who would deserve a name which I do not want to mention. Whoever does not go about reading my books with unconditionally hostile intentions and is honestly willing will, without much of an effort, find that their contents consist of almost nothing but parables. And to him who has once reached this realization, the numerous fables of heaven will quite surely not remain unnoticed, which are strewn all over these parables and which have to form the actual, deepest contents of my traveller's tales. These fables are also the material out of which I will have to develop my real life-work in the end of my final days.
After all, even my very first character, Hadji Halef Omar, is already a fable, the fable of the lost human soul, which can never be found again, unless it finds itself. And this Hadji is my own anima; yes, he is the anima of Karl May! By describing all the flaws of this Hadji, I disclose my own faults, and thereby, I make a confession the likes of which was probably never made before thus comprehensively and thus honestly by any author. I may very well maintain that I do not deserve in the least certain allegations which are being made by my opponents. If, for a change, these opponents would dare to talk thus openly about themselves as I talk about myself, then this so-called Karl-May-problem would have reached that state a long time ago, which it eventually has to reach, whether they like it or not. For this Karl-May-problem is also a parable. It is nothing else but that great, general problem of mankind, which countless millions have already endeavoured to solve, without achieving any tangible result. Just the same, they have already, for several decades, endeavoured to work on me, without producing more than this pathetic caricature as which I live in the brains and the writings of those who feel called upon to solve problems, but always do this just there where there are none.