Did the Rio Grande flow through Munich? A hundred years ago, the Isar Westerns were booming in Bavaria. The quickly shot films served a curious Wild West mania, near the Alps some still consider themselves "Indians" today.
Spiegel
By Katja Iken
6/13/2019
A day in the autumn of 1919: Unsuspectingly, Munich walkers are strolling south along the banks of the Isar when a troop of 30 fearsome figures comes towards them. The men have soot-blackened faces, move in the direction of Geiselgasteig and carry weapons. The excursionists alert the police, and guards hurriedly ride up.
When the actors Joe Stöckel and Fritz Kampers turn the corner, it turns out that there is no evil gang of robbers at work here - filming is underway here. "Die Indianer-Lilly " is the name of the film by director Peter Ostermayr. It is one of around 20 so-called Isar Westerns that caused a sensation after the First World War.
The films were produced as quickly as cheaply by Munich
film pioneers from the very beginning - and were immensely popular. Shortly
after the First World War, there was an import ban on US films. Isar westerns
such as "Der schwarze Jack" (1918) or "Die Geier der
Goldgruben" (1919/20) simply had no competition, but an enthusiastic fan
base, especially in Bavaria.
"There has always been a strong penchant for the exotic and weird in this country, a special joy in disguise," says Hermann Wilhelm, 70, author of the recently published illustrated book "Wild West Munich". The artist and local historian searched for the beginnings of the Bavarian Wild West mania and is convinced: the traditional costume alone connects the two cultures. "Here the Bavarians in lederhosen and chamois beards or feathers on their hats, there the 'Indians' in leather costumes and feather headdresses."
According to Wilhelm, the trigger for this Bavarian spleen is the famous bison slayer William Frederick Cody - as "Buffalo Bill" the world's most photographed person of the late 19th century. With his "Wild West Show", the American entertainer made a guest appearance at Munich's Theresienwiese from April 19 to May 5, 1890.
"Indian" Schuhplattler fans
Around 200,000 people, including Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig III) and his family, flocked to admire the braggart celebrated in Bavaria as "Ochsen-Willy". Those who couldn't get a ticket tried to get one of the rare window seats in the surrounding houses.
Buffalo hunts and horse races, "Indian" dances and songs were presented, as well as the "attack of an emigrant train by Indians and the defense of it by the border residents". Buffalo Bill's entourage re-enacted General Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn. And the legendary markswoman Annie Oakley shot the cigarette out of the mouth of a "target person thirty steps away".
The highlight, however, was gunslinger Buffalo Bill himself. "He always acts as a saving angel and shoots Indian chiefs," enthused the "Münchener Fremden-Blatt". The fact that Buffalo Bill - similar to Völkerschau organizer Carl Hagenbeck and Sarrasani circus pioneer Hans Stosch - exhibited people like zoo animals and that his version of the Wild West had long been a thing of the past, did not bother the astonished audience at the time.
Nor did anyone take offense at the fact that the show star had driven the extinction of the American bison in the USA and thus robbed the natives of one of their most important livelihoods. Munich indulged in Wild West fever - and conversely, the US visitors also warmed up to the Bavarian cultural heritage.
According to contemporary reports, Buffalo Bill's "Indian" employees strolled through the city's taverns, and at Gärtnerplatz they watched a dialect play in full gear. And they applauded at the Schuhplattler until the Bavarians repeated their folk dance.
Cowboys on bicycle saddles
"To play 'Indians and Trappers' is the wish of everyone," wrote the "Generalanzeiger" about the enthusiasm of the people of Munich. Numerous associations were founded and recreated the supposedly great life in the land of unlimited opportunities. Local historian Wilhelm speaks of a "real boom".
It all started in 1894 with the bicycle pioneer Heinrich Zierle. After an alleged son of Buffalo Bill challenged (and lost) the Munich professional cyclist Josef Fischer to the "Cycling Horse" competition, Zierle founded the Velocipede Club Wild West in an inn. Instead of on horseback, the members worked on bicycles with whips, lasso and revolvers; they performed their tricks on a small wooden roundel.
Shortly afterwards, the American Club Buffalo Bill, the Club American Boys, the Cowboy Club München Nord were founded in Munich. And in 1913 the Cowboy Club Munich: the oldest still existing club of its kind in Germany, built up by three men who actually wanted to emigrate to America. Like so many Bavarians at the turn of the century. "Hundreds of thousands of them sought their fortune overseas," says local historian Wilhelm, who heads the Haidhausen Museum in Munich.
The brothers Fred and Hermann Sommer as well as Martin Fromberger initially founded the Cowboy Club as a Wild West lottery club: they wanted to travel to the USA with winnings from lotteries. But the men were lucky only once - they won 40 marks in the bird protection lottery.
Western without shot and scream
So the prevented emigrants stayed in Munich and indulged their longing for wilderness and vastness at the foot of the Alps. A desire that Karl May's "Winnetou" novels served just as perfectly as the Isar Westerns produced from 1918 onwards, which today only survive in fragments: they were shot in daylight and contained a lot of action and battles, but as silent films they had to make do without shots and screams.
Many Munich cinema pioneers, including the early film companies Arri and Emelka, sought their entrepreneurial fortune in the Western. According to film scholar Thomas Brandlmeier, the advantages were obvious: You didn't need expensive equipment or decoration, a studio or particularly talented actors - and the location was the postcard idyll in the south of Munich free of charge.
[Lots of action, little cost: "Das Milliardentestament", shot in Bavaria in 1919 Photo: Cowboy Club München/ morisel Verlag]
The picturesque Electoral Palatinate also served as an early Ballermann setting: Parallel to the Isar Westerns, the so-called Neckar Westerns were created in the areas between Heidelberg and Ludwigshafen.
Actor and producer Josef Stöckel, who called himself Joe, staged a whole series of Isar Westerns, which, according to him, were "sold all over the world due to the really exciting presentation". In fact, the disguised Heimatfilms rarely made it to Berlin at all. Critics often mocked the fact that cowboys owned dachshunds or that Bavarian interiors were provisionally concealed with "Stars and Stripes".
"With Munich suburban wagons from California to New York"
For example, a reviewer of "Revenge in the Gold Valley" (1920) found that "not a single scene is American". And in the case of the Isar western "The Fight for the Gold Find" (1920), a journalist criticized "the fact that you travel from California to New York in Munich suburban cars."
The moviegoers liked it
anyway. They were particularly enthusiastic about grandiose landscape shots and
risky action scenes. From 1921, however, the Western slapstick on the Isar and
Neckar rivers came to an end: the US competition was back on the market with
real Westerns, and at the same time the galloping inflation of the first German
Western wave was severely affected.
No comments:
Post a Comment