Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung
Osnabruck (ots)
Karl May expert: “Do not reduce texts to racist content”
Art education professor Andreas Brenne against rewriting children’s and youth literature
Osnabruck. Karl May expert Andreas Brenne defends the author of the adventure novels about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand against criticism. “We have to reread Karl May’s works from today’s point of view. It is not enough to reduce these texts to colonialist and racist content. They certainly are in part, but you can also find the opposite,” said Brenne of the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung ” (NOZ). The professor from the University of Potsdam has just organized the conference “Cultural Representations in Karl May’s Work” in Potsdam.
At the center of the debate about the film “The Young Chief Winnetou”, based on Karl May, was the allegation of a clichéd depiction of foreign cultures. After a shit storm on the Internet, Ravensburger Verlag had removed books about the film from its program. “Despite an inherent colonial habit, Karl May was on the side of the oppressed. For me, he’s not a racist, even if he works with clichés,” says Andreas Brenne.
The professor of art education also calls for children’s and young people’s literature not to be too hastily smoothed out and kept free of depictions of conflict. “My pedagogical attitude is not to protect children and young people from incriminated texts or words. The world is sometimes terrible and disturbing. We have to create spaces in which such disturbances can be discussed. But a child has to have an ethical attitude develop yourself,” said Brenne and added: “That doesn’t happen by just creating ideal conditions. Children’s books that can no longer explicitly describe a racist as a character are of no help here. Literature also has something wild about it. You should do that to children not withheld”.
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