I repeat that I was travelling and was therefore unable to grant this wish, even if I had wanted to. On April the 5th, 1908, this was
a full half year later,
I received another letter from the editor's office of the "Vorwärts":
"We regret that you have not spoken out yet regarding the accusations against you by Lebius, or respectively that you have not supplied us with the necessary evidence on the slanderous acts of Lebius in respect to you. As I have been told by my colleague Wermuth, your wife has informed us that you were currently travelling and that you were unable to supply us with the desired material against Lebius. I am hoping that you have returned from your journey in the meantime und that you will now . . . ."
I guess, this sufficiently proves that it is not me who is pursuing Mr. Lebius, but that he is pursuing me. Mr. Lebius pretends that I had approached him at that time on the anniversary of the battle of Sedan [a] to be able to assist the "Vorwärts". Hereby, I am proving that I did not know anything about this complaint for gross insult at this time yet, but rather that the "Vorwärts" only informed me about it one month later and did not even receive an answer to this after another six months had passed! Thus, I had spared Mr. Lebius for a full six month, though it had been made so convenient and easy for me by the social democratic party to get my revenge against him. That I do not pursue him, but am, again and again, being forced by him to act in self defence, is, by the way, also proven by the fact that I have avoided up to this day to testify as a witness against him. The situation concerning this testimony in favour of the editor of the "Vorwärts" had been like this:
[a] September the 2nd.
Lebius had sued the "Vorwärts" for gross insult, and the "Vorwärts" had named me as a witness, of course without bothering to ask me first. Lebius was told by his conscience that he could probably not expect many kind words from this witness. Yes, the thought even occurred to him that I had already known about my role as a witness when we met at the Café Bauer. This enraged him. He sent his wife to my wife to Radebeul, to make threats against me. My wife wished this meeting to take place in my house; but Mrs. Lebius refused. The two women met at the restaurant of our railroad-station. There, Mrs. Lebius wanted to dictate to us, instructed by her husband, what and how I had to testify as a witness. In particular, I was supposed to declare in court that he had not written that threatening postcard of September the 7th in Dresden. If I did not do this, he would have to start the old fight against me anew. My wife rejected all of this most decisively, for were were now more convinced than ever that he was its author. Thus, his wife returned to Berlin, without having accomplished her mission.
Once Lebius had realized that this attempt had failed, he decided to render me unfit to testify under oath, and he planned to do so by means of a pamphlet, which had to be published soon enough before the appointed time when I was supposed to appear as a witness. But since this pamphlet, in order to be able to have its effect, had to be written in such a manner which absolutely inevitably had to be followed by a criminal prosecution of the author, which Lebius did not want to bring on himself, he looked around for a man to act as a front, who did not know him and Karl May yet and was sufficiently inexperienced, gullible, and in need of cash to get involved in this, for a few hundred marks, which would quite certainly lead to a prison sentence for him, without even suspecting a thing. He found him in the shape of certain Mr. F.W. Kahl from Basel, pulled him into his web, and spun such a network of self-praise and lies around him, that this young, perfectly honest man almost considered it to be an honour to be allowed to put himself into the service of such an important, mentally, socially,and also in legal matters so very outstanding man.