Westerns and Neowesterns   Of Heroes and Anti-Heroes

From silent cinema to the feminist neo‑western, the western was never exclusively an American genre. Between Karl May in the West and the GDR’s "Indianerfilme"*, Germany developed its own western traditions — ideologically charged and visually distinctive. Later, filmmakers such as Roland Klick, Hark Bohm, and Valeska Grisebach radically reinterpreted the western, reshaping it into a genre capable of negotiating far more than the U.S. frontier.

The western is often regarded as one of cinema’s primordial genres — and also one of the most frequently pronounced dead. Ever since The Great Train Robbery (1903, Edwin S. Porter) carved its twelve unforgettable minutes into film history, the genre's iconic elements have shaped the medium itself: borderlands, movement through landscape, violence as a force of order, and the solitary hero wrestling with moral conflict.

Heroes and Anti‑Heroes

Although firmly tied to the myth of the American frontier, the western was adapted internationally early on. For decades, however, it was shaped by stereotypical and problematic portrayals of First Nations peoples and by largely marginalized roles for women. By the 1950s, cracks began to appear: heroes grew more conflicted, violence became self‑reflexive, the notion of order questionable. The western opened itself to hybrid forms — including science‑fiction, horror, and arthouse variations. As early as the 1930s, there were genre outliers such as The Phantom Empire (1935, Otto Brower), a 12‑part U.S. western serial in which a singing cowboy discovers an ancient underground civilization far ahead of its time. Hugely successful, it is considered the first science‑fiction western. From the 1950s onward, the genre diversified — along with its heroes and anti‑heroes.

To this day, the western remains a modular toolbox for hybrid genres. A recent and highly successful example is Ryan Coogler’s vampire western Sinners (2025), which grossed over 90 million dollars at the box office.

Southern German Landscapes with Transatlantic Story Patterns

Looking to Germany, Wild West clubs, variety shows, and popular illusions of an American frontier myth already existed around the turn of the century. During the silent‑film era, the first German westerns were produced — shot in Berlin, Munich, or along the Neckar River. The two‑part Leatherstocking (Lederstrumpf, 1920, Arthur Wellin) marks an early milestone: featuring Bela Lugosi as Chingachgook — later famous as cinema’s quintessential Dracula — the film fused southern German landscapes with transatlantic narrative patterns. In parallel, so‑called Isar and Neckar westerns such as The Secret of the Wild West Pit (Das Geheimnis der Wildwestkuhle, 1919) adapted the genre’s form while relocating it geographically. With the re-admission of American films, German western production lost significance. During the Nazi era, only a few titles were made, such as The Emperor of California (Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, 1936, Luis Trenker), whose myth‑making was closely tied to national ideology. While filmmakers in the United States were already breaking with the classical western around 1950, western production in divided Germany surged from the 1960s onward — though under completely different ideological conditions. In both the FRG and the GDR, the same genre became a stage for opposing worldviews.

Genre Conventions and Anti‑Imperialist Didacticism

With The Treasure of Silver Lake (Der Schatz im Silbersee, 1962), the Karl May wave began. Pierre Brice as Winnetou and Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand embodied an idealized vision of friendship and masculinity that resonated deeply in postwar West Germany. This was followed by Winnetou I–III (1963–65). These films are visually opulent, emotionally clear‑cut — and heavily stereotyped. Winnetou appears as a morally elevated noble savage, while Old Shatterhand functions as the German mediator between cultures. Despite (or because of) these simplifications, the films became box‑office hits and shaped West Germany’s image of the western for decades. With the "Oberhausen Manifesto" (1962) and the rise of New German Cinema, the Karl May western rapidly lost cultural prestige — and largely disappeared from contemporary film production.

Parallel to this, DEFA in the GDR developed a deliberate counter‑model: the so‑called "Indianerfilme". Here, Indigenous characters were placed at the center — as victims of colonialism, capitalism, and violence. The first DEFA western, The Sons of the Great Bear (Die Söhne der großen Bärin, 1965), was based on a successful book series by Lieselotte Welskopf‑Henrich, who also wrote the screenplay. The film made Gojko Mitić a star and established a distinct socialist western tradition. Productions such as Chingachgook, The Great Snake (1967), and Apaches (1973) combined genre conventions with anti‑imperialist didacticism.

A Space for Reflecting on Aging, Failure, and Masculinity

From the 1970s onward, the western in West Germany became the terrain of auteur filmmakers. Roland Klick’s Deadlock (1970) marked a turning point: a radically stripped‑down anti‑western, influenced by the Spaghetti Western, situated somewhere between exploitation cinema, existentialism, and chamber drama. Set in the middle of nowhere in a Mexican ghost town, Deadlock plays with genre tropes — a suitcase full of money, a killer, a crook — and lets the bullets fly in flamboyant 1970s B‑movie style. Hark Bohm created an early auteur western with Tschetan, The Indian Boy (1973), visually shaped by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. In Tschetan, the Bavarian Alps become a stand‑in for Montana around 1880, where a German shepherd and an Indigenous boy form an unlikely bond.

As the classical western faded from cinemas, it lived on through parody and quotation. Manitou’s Shoe (Der Schuh des Manitu, Michael “Bully” Herbig, 2001) punctured Karl May nostalgia with irony and slapstick and became one of the biggest box‑office successes in German film history. At the same time, international co‑productions and U.S.–German neo‑westerns emerged, such as Don’t Come Knocking (2005, Wim Wenders), which used the genre as a space to reflect on aging, failure, and masculinity. Auteur filmmaker Thomas Arslan pushed the western into a minimalist, sober register with Gold (2013). Starring Nina Hoss, the film follows a group of German emigrants traveling to Canada at the turn of the century in search of gold — forced to overcome not only uncharted terrain but also one another and themselves. With Western (2017), Valeska Grisebach fundamentally shifted the genre’s perspective. Her film is less interested in plot than in gestures, glances, and power dynamics. The western becomes a study of masculinity, otherness, and European labor migration in the Bulgarian borderlands. Parallels can be found in U.S. cinema through Kelly Reichardt, whose works (Meek’s Cutoff, First Cow) reinterpret the genre in feminist and quietly radical ways.

Today, the western is no longer a mass phenomenon in German cinema — but an aesthetic laboratory. Between deconstruction, memory, and political renegotiation, it remains a space for reflecting on social questions: Who owns land? Who tells history? And who stands at the margins of the frame — or suddenly at its center?

* The term “Indianerfilm” used in the article is used exclusively as a historical genre designation. The foreign designation “Indian” is now widely considered problematic and discriminatory. Its use is therefore not affirmative, but serves exclusively to describe historical discourses and terminology within the genre.

Streaming (North America, as of 2025)

Leatherstocking (Lederstrumpf, 1920) — Archive / silent‑film DVD editions
The Treasure of Silver Lake — Apple TV+, VOD
Winnetou I–III — VOD, physical media
DEFA - "Indianerfilme" (The Sons of the Great Bear, Chingachgook, The Great Snake) — Kanopy, DEFA Film Library
Deadlock — restored editions, partly on MUBI
Gold — VOD (US/Canada)
Western (2017) — Criterion Channel, VOD

03/2026