New Boss for Winnetou and Co.

The archaeologist, musicologist and sports historian Christian Wacker will become the new director of the Karl-May-Museum and Managing Director of the Karl May Foundation from April 2018.

The archaeologist, musicologist and sports historian Christian Wacker will be the new director of the Karl-May-Museum and Managing Director of the Karl May Foundation beginning in April 2018. Wacker, who was born in Munich in 1966, would won "a competent, professionally qualified museum and antiquity scholar of international standing," the Karl May Foundation announced in a statement on Wednesday.

Wacker taught at various universities in Germany, Greece and Brazil and organized more than 30 exhibitions. As director of the German Sports and Olympic Museum in Cologne and the Olympic Sports Museum of Qatar in Doha, he has demonstrated his skills as a museum director. Most recently, he developed a further-education program for museum work at the University of Freiburg. In Radebeul, Wacker, who is married to Brazilian sports historian Marcia de Franceschi Neto-Wacker, now faces the challenge of lifting the planned new museum building on Meißner Strasse. Wacker has a good knowledge of the writings of Karl May and his life, says the Karl May Foundation. And he could make May's legacy, the educational intent and spread of tolerance, international understanding and love of peace, come alive in future exhibitions.

The position of museum director of the Karl-May-Museum became vacant after the departure of René Wagner more than four years ago. Since then the position has been covered by the commercial director Claudia Kaulfuß.