Cowboys and Indians

Abstract

Eliciting fantasy, adventure, and romantic ideals of natural living, the American Indian has been a long cherished symbol for the German people. In the nineteenth century, with Germans migrating to the United States, Germany’s evolutionary role in ethnography and anthropology, and the immense popularity of Karl May’s work, this interest was intensified, easily surviving the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century. The spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, German support of the American Indian Movement beginning in the 1970s, and the rise of Indian fan clubs revived Karl May’s work in the second half of the twentieth century, helping to sustain a German connection to all things Indian. This study follows the course of this influence on German art of the twentieth century through a chronological examination of representative works by Rudolf Schlichter, Max Ernst, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke and Lothar Baumgarten. The image of America, as represented in the guise of the Wild West, has provided a point of deflection, a method of escape and a target for Germans artists for over one hundred years.