I even dare to start this section with the plan I found out from Fischer, which was:
"May has been to prison. He has to keep this a secret. We have him in our hands. Two lines are enough, and he will be quiet. If he sues us, we will destroy him by publishing his prior convictions in all newspapers throughout Germany. What May has agreed upon with Münchmeyer is irrelevant. What matters is, who will get the opportunity to testify under oath. And we will know how to make sure that May will not get this opportunity."
By no means, Fischer has only talked about this plan in private, but he also testified about this, putting it on record, and it had been incessantly confirmed in the course of the legal dispute, which now already lasts for nine years. I do not want to talk here about those things which the lawyer Dr. Gerlach, in the name of his client Pauline Münchmeyer, has asserted and denied contrary to the truth. But he has portrayed me right from the start as a person who is to the highest degree unqualified for taking the oath. I simply cannot list all those offensive swear-words here he has showered me with for as long as the last nine years and continues to do so without me being able to have him punished for this, because, as a lawyer, he is protected by the very same article of the law which forces me to put up with liberties from him which no other person would ever take. Being repeatedly admonished by the judges and asked to answer for himself by other lawyers, he nevertheless remains faithful to this speciality of his. To carry out the Münchmeyers' plan, it was first of all necessary to obtain my criminal records. For this purpose an unfounded complaint for gross insult was issued, which was instantly retracted as soon as the purpose had been reached. From that time on, more or less allusive notes appeared in the newspapers about my past. "I know even more!" one of them wrote; "You would know what I mean, wouldn't you, Mr. May?" another one asked. The "destruction" began. But the spiritus rector, the real perpetrator, always remained cleverly hidden in the shadows; he never showed himself; he always reached his ends through other persons. The area of his work reaches far beyond his professional duties, his correspondence is very extensive, concerning almost exclusively Karl May. He is in intimate contact with all of my literary opponents, and wherever a paper is writing about me, a letter by him or one of his confidants is sure to follow. And almost everywhere, they believe him. They believe him just as Cardauns used to believe this liar who told him so convincingly that the Münchmeyer novels had been written by me precisely as they had been printed.
This gentleman Dr. Hermann Cardauns is inseparably connected with this very dark and very ugly chapter of the contemporary history of literature which is referred to as "Karl-May-persecution". He did not want to have it any other way. There, he stands in close union with people he otherwise does not belong to. This is also how he wanted it to be. His crushing style, his infallible way of choosing his words, his "abysmal" or "evident" pleonasms became a model for others, especially for those who construct those figurative nooses around my neck, to "whip me out of the Germen arts". But the entire conglomeration of what he has spoken and written in lectures and newspapers against me, constitutes by no means a sturdy column, which no one would be able to shake, but rather a paper kite in the shape of a dragon, compiled from lots of vague circumstantial evidence, the rope of which nobody wants to hold any more aside from Mr. Cardauns himself. It surely takes a lot of blind faith, to think like him that my "indecencies" could also be proven by other means than only by the presentation of my original manuscripts. Just making a lot of words will not do it; assertions will also remain unsuccessful, as long as they are not proven. Though there is a lot to be read in Cardauns's essays against me about files, documents, and other evidence, he claims to possess proving my guild, I have not yet been shown a single official file and no single document. As it seems, this gentleman owns an older printed copy by Münchmeyer and a later edition by Fischer and presumes the first one to be a literal copy of my original. But I regard it as truly inconceivable that a "main or chief editor" could be thus mistaken. I am just too willing to consent that he has no idea what kinds of things are commonly practised by a notorious publisher of trash and colportage and what kind of a swindle this entire business is, but this does not excuse, but rather incriminate, him, because not knowing this, he also should not take the liberty of drawing conclusions from the reasoning of the filthy colportage which may only be dawn from the reasoning of honourable people. Fischer could only enjoy the tremendous success of the rewritten trashy novels thanks to the excessively loud roll of the drums of Mr. Cardauns. Even the most incompetent politician knows that these kinds of things can only be killed by silence and not by gongs and tomtoms. But I, who was supposed to be struck dead by these tomtoms, these speeches and newspaper articles, have been rendered unable by this to remove this trash entirely from the face of this world as I had intended. My intentions were good; but since Mr. Cardauns supported my opponents by keeping me from carrying out those intentions, he has done Münchmeyer's colportage a service, for which they will always think gratefully of him. During all of this long time until now, he has been their faithful champion; whether he had planed it this way or not, the effect remains the same.
The second champion for Münchmeyer's cause, ranking highly above the first one, even mentally, is the former social democrat Mr. Rudolf Lebius in Charlottenburg, who had seceded from the Christian church. Concerning him, I will quote a passage from my written statements to the fourth criminal division of the Royal Superior Court III in Berlin:
In the year 1902, I was travelling in the South, and at the Lake Garda, the mail from home caught up with me, containing among others a letter by a certain Lebius, who described himself in a rather exuberant manner as a man who intimately knew and admired my work, and he made the request to be permitted to visit me at some time. This exuberance instantly arose my suspicion. "He wants money, nothing else", I said to myself. I replied to him that I was not at home and that I therefore was unable to invite him. In answer to this, he wrote to me on April the 7th, 1904:
"Dear Sir!
"As early as one and a half years ago, I had attempted to get in contact with you, to which the enclosed card will serve as evidence. In the meantime, I have published a new newspaper, here, which has won great popularity. Could you be persuaded to write something for my paper? Something biographical perhaps, on the way you work, or on such details which might interest the German readership of Karl May. I would also like to interview you.
"With outstanding admiration
"Rudolf Lebius,
publisher and editor."
| "Rudolf Lebius, publisher and editor." |