The Ravensburger Verlag stops the delivery of a Winnetou children’s book, now a discussion sparks. The trigger for the decision was massive criticism of the work.
Ravensburg – A retraction by Ravensburger Verlag on a Winnetou children’s book caused discussions. As a company spokesman confirmed on Monday, the delivery of the book has already been stopped due to “playing down stereotypes” about the treatment of the indigenous people at the plant. The publisher had previously announced the step in an online network and justified it with “the large amount of negative feedback” on the book “The Young Chief Winnetou”. Several media reported about it.
According to the information, the stopped articles are licensed titles – a children’s book from the age of eight, a first-time reader’s book, a puzzle and a sticker book.
Ravensburger Verlag stops Winnetou children’s book because of “trivializing clichés”
The publisher had “carefully considered” and decided to remove the titles from the program, a spokesman for the publisher told the AFP news agency. Ravensburger was “convinced that in view of the historical reality, the oppression of the indigenous population, a romanticizing picture with many clichés is being drawn”. The stuff about Winnetou “enthralled many people”, but was “far removed from how the indigenous population actually fared”. The publisher therefore does not want to “repeat and spread trivializing clichés”.
The publication of the children’s book for the film of the same name triggered considerable criticism on the Internet. The feedback showed that “we hurt the feelings of others with the Winnetou titles,” the publisher explained on Instagram a few days ago. “That was never our intention,” Ravensburger explained and apologized “expressly.”
Discussion about Winnetou children’s book: Criticism of racist stereotypes
According to reports, one criticism of Internet users was that the book reproduced racist stereotypes. Users also submitted comments under the hashtag #winnetou, with many participants expressing a lack of understanding about the publisher’s decision.
The Karl May expert Andreas Brenne considers the Winnetou book harmless and criticized the publisher’s decision. “I don’t think it’s right to take a book like this out of circulation just because of a shitstorm,” said the art education professor at the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung .
Already in a preliminary remark it is made clear that the book is to be understood as a fictional story and not as an objective representation of the life of indigenous peoples. Brenne warned against generalizing the accusation of false cultural appropriation without thinking. “Even dressing up as an Indian is then considered a racist act,” explained Brenne, who works on program issues in the Karl May Society.
Winnetou film received the rating particularly valuable
Previously, the German Film and Media Evaluation (FBW), which is supported by the federal states and which assesses films for their quality, had published a split opinion on the film “The Young Chief Winnetou”. Some jury members consider it no longer permissible to make a film “in the spirit of the mythically charged and very clichéd Karl May ‘folklore'”.
According to the FBW, the film was approved by a large majority of the jury. They pointed out that Karl May had written his stories from his imagination, and that the films made in the 1960s were also fairy tales that portrayed the world of the indigenous peoples “in an absolutely clichéd image”. The members of the jury decided that bringing this into a fairytale-like children’s film today was quite legitimate. In the end, the film received the rating particularly valuable.
