Nehaveigur

You have probably come across spaghetti Westerns: Movies set in the Old West but made by Italians, starring Italians or filmed in Italy. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood is a famous example, but my favorite is They Call Me Trinity starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

While the Italians were the most prolific makers of Westerns outside America, the genre was also popular in the rest of Europe, including Finland, France and even Eastern Bloc countries that have since ceased to exist, including East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The most successful West German Westerns (if there’s a better term for those I want to know) are based on the novels of 19th century writer Karl May. I watched a lot of them as a kid, and I can still whistle the Winnetou theme from The Treasure of Silver Lake. Movies like that aren’t supposed to influence important life choice. Would I have emigrated to California without as a boy having watched those Westerns made by Germans in Yugoslavia 35 years earlier? I can’t confidently say I definitely would have.