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The legacy of Spaetzle Westerns
The Italians may be famous for their spaghetti westerns, but in Germany,
the cowboys and “Indianerfilms” ride high with film lovers By Scott Roxborough
AS JEFF BRIDGES,
Hailee Steinfeld,
Josh Brolin and
the Coen Brothers
ride in today for the
Berlin Festival opener True
Grit, they will be welcomed
by a local audience wild for
Westerns.
Germans have a long
and enduring love aff air
with the most American
of genres. Wild West tales
from High Noon
to Once Upon a
Time In the West
to Dances With
Wolves have been
huge hits here.
There are more
than a hundred
Wild West clubs
across the county
where grown men (and a
few women) gather to play
cowboys and Indians on
stage sets of saloons and
hitching posts. Iconic Western
images of the wide,
unbroken horizon, the solitary
cowboy on the lonely
trail or the sheriff bringing
justice to a lawless land are
as engraved on the German
mind as the characters of
2
Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
But there is also a
tradition of Westerns
made in Germany. In West
Germany in the 1960s
there were the Winnetou
fi lms, based on the Wild
West novels of Karl May, a
German writer who never
visited America. The adventures
of the Apache brave
Winnetou and his whiteskinned
blood brother
Old Shatterhand were
instant hits and are
still staples on German
TV.
Quentin Tarrantino
pays tribute to the
franchise in
Inglori-
ous Basterds in the
scene where German
soldiers are playing
of genres. Wild West tales skinned blood brother
Manitou's
Shoe
Winnetou
a who-am-I guessing
game where the answer is
“Winnetou, Chief of the
Apaches!”
Bavarian director Bully
Herbig went one step further
with his 2001 western
spoof Mannitou’s Shoe,
which lovingly mocks the
Winnetou fi lms. It earned
some $90 million, making
it the most successful German
fi lm of all time.
It was a diff erent story
in the East. If anything, in
the former GDR, Westerns
were even more popular.
“When I was a kid in
Leipzig, East Germany,
playing Indians was an
antidote to the Young Pioneer’s
indoctrination and
CONTINUED ON PAGE 52
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APACHE GOLD PHOTO: COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION