B Traven Biography and List of Works

B. Traven is one of the most mysterious figures in 20th-century literature. His exact identity, place and date of birth are still subject to much debate. Although Traven claimed to be an American, his most important works were first published in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, before some of them appeared in translation in England. Nothing definitive is known about Traven's origins. However, Traven's novels have been translated into more than 30 languages, sold more than 25 million copies, and they are required reading in Mexican schools.

"Dobbs had nothing. It may safely be said that he had less than nothing, for he was not even adequately or completely clothed, and clothing, to those in need, is a modest start toward capital."
(from The Treasure of Sierra Madre, 1927)

Some investigators believe that B. Traven was the pen name of Otto Feige, the son of a German pottery worker from Schwiebus (now Swiebodzin, Poland), who travelled widely and worked variously as a manual labourer, actor, and the editor of an anarchist journal. He was also rumoured to be the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Traven's widow announced in 1990 that he had been Ret Marut, a left-wing revolutionary in Germany during World War I. According to one theory, Traven was born in Chicago to Swedish parents, spent his youth in Germany, and settled in Mexico in the 1920's. It has been suggested, that Traven was a pseudonym adopted by Jack London or Ambrose Bierce or Adolfo Lopez Mateos, a former President of Mexico.

In his study The Secret of Sierra Madre (1980) Will Wyatt argues, that Traven was born in 1882 in Schwiebus, Pomerania, and christened Herman Albert Otto Macksymilian Wienecke. He was the illegitimate son of Hormina Wienecke and Adolf Rudolf Feige. After his parents married Traven became Otto Feige. In 1896 he was apprenticed to a locksmith and in 1902-04 he served in the army. In about 1904 Feige disappeared.

Karl S. Guthke has presented in his work B. Traven: The Life Behind the Legend (1991) evidence that suggests that between the years 1904 and 1907 Traven could have been a seaman. In 1907 a young actor and director joined the Essen Municipal Theatre under the name Ret Marut, which sounds like a pseudonym - and this person became Traven. Ret Marut played in various theatres and in 1915 he went to Munich to start his career as a writer. In 1916 he published a novella, TO THE HONORABLE MISS S... and started to write for the anarchist-pacifist magazine Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brickburner), which appeared between 1917 and 1922.In its pages Marut attacks the military, capitalism, Jewish newspaper owners, but also writes admiringly about Gustav Landauer, an anarchist and a Jew. He was involved in the uprising in Munich in 1919, which led to that city's short-lived Räterepublik. Soldiers murdered landauer, and on May 1 of that year White Guard soldiers, according to Marut's own later account in Der Ziegelbrenner, arrested him. He escaped before he became the victim of summarily executions. Between 1915 and 1924 he tried in vain to obtain American papers, and in 1923 Marut escaped to England, where he stayed for some time.

On Mexican Government immigration documents dating to the 1930's, Traven claimed to have entered Mexico for the first time at Ciudad Juarez in 1914. After arriving in Mexico, Traven lived in his new home country for the bulk of his remaining years. He settled first in the oil town of Tampico, writing letters to German publishers, and publishing stories under the name B. Traven. In 1925 his first texts under the name of Traven appeared. Irene Mermet, whom he had met in Germany, assisted him with the manuscripts for some years. Later Mermet married an American lawyer.

"I am freer than anybody else. I am free to choose the parents I want, the country I want, the age I want."
(Traven according to Mrs Lujan, New York Times, June 25, 1990)

From Mexico Travers sent manuscripts to German periodicals, and in 1926 his novel Das Totenschiff (The Death Ship), was published, and became an immediate success. According to a story, Albert Einstein named it as the book he would take with him to a desert island. The protagonist is an American sailor, Gerard Gales, who is stranded in Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1920s. He has no identity papers and is kicked from country to country by the authorities. Finally he ends up shovelling coal in hellish conditions on the Yorikke, a gunrunner destined to go to the bottom of the sea for the insurance money. In Africa Gales and Stanislav, his fellow coal stoker, leave Yorrikke but find themselves aboard the Empress of Madagascar, heading for a shipwreck. Gales also appears in Der Wobbly (1926, The Cotton Pickers) and Die Brücke im Dschungel (1928, The Bridge in the Jungle), which all have an autobiographical feel. The name of the American adventurer is similar to that of Linn A.E. Gale, the editor of Gale's International Monhtly for Revolutionary Communism. When IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) began its activities in Mexico in 1918, Gale became one of its leading figures.

The Death Ship was followed by Der Schatz der Sierra Madre (1927, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Der Busch (1928), and Die Weisse Rose (1929, The White Rose). Traven's work reflects serious issues of social justice, cruelty, and greed while employing a taut, suspenseful style. His early works deal with tramps either looking for work or temporarily finding it, and in the process being caught in a worldwide exploitative system. In Regierung (1931, Government), a depiction of political corruption and the exploitation of the poor, Traven shows how a brutal regime works, but also provides information on rural Mexico. The book was part of a cycle of novels about the Mexican revolution of 1910-12.

"Don Gabriel had a good revolver and he could shoot as straight as the next man. The Indians had no revolvers and could not buy any either; they had no money and, in any case, it was strictly forbidden to sell them revolvers or rifles, apart from muzzle-loaders for game. So Don Gabriel accepted the post. He would have accepted the post of watching boiling cauldrons in hell if anyone had offered it to him. He was so down on his luck that he had no choice. It was getting on to twenty years since he had sought a way out in honest work. And a job in government is far and away the best. A man has only to keep his eyes open and pounce as soon as the prey shows its nose."

Traven's stories appeared in many languages, although they were not translated before the 1930s into English, which he insisted was his native tongue. He used English words and syntax in the German texts, but he was also familiar with American mainstream writers. Some critics have concluded that Marut, who did not know English well, translated into German, manuscripts originally written by an American in English, and added his own philosophy in the text. For these critics, Traven's works are thus the product of collaboration. But then - what happened to the unknown American?

Michael L. Baumann has presented in Mr. Traven, I Presume? (1997) the most plausible theory of the writer behind Traven's books. According to Baumann, B. Traven was a scholar for more than 30 years and an emeritus professor of American Literature;Marut-Torsvan-Croves was not the creator of the original B. Traven manuscripts. Baumann contrasts the bitter and anti-Semitic tones in Marut's texts to Traven's humanism and sense of humour, and points out that Ret Marut had two different handwriting styles, European and American, and Traven's books published in Germany are full of American expressions. The conclusion is that Traven was "most certainly American, to judge by his language alone and the hundreds of Americanisms that appear in the German Traven texts, either untranslated, badly translated, or transliterated." But who was this mysterious person? Baumann doesn't give a definitive answer but offers some plausible candidates, among them the person behind Mr. Sleight, a central character from The Bridge in the Jungle (1938). Another path leads to Marut's own relatives and Albert Otto Max Wienecke, an alias Marut had used - Wienecke could be his cousin.

In 1930 Traven moved into a small house, El Parque Cachu, outside Acapulco, where he lived for twenty-five years. In the 1930s the Nazis banned his works in Germany. Between the years 1931 and 1940 he published six interrelated novels of the Mahogany or jungle cycle, starting with Der Karren (The Carreta). The cycle forms an epic history of the events in southern Mexico, leading up to the revolution of 1910. From the mid-1930s, Traven's books were translated into English, but it was not until 1948 when he gained fame with the John Huston's film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston.

After 1940 Traven wrote little. In the mid-1950's, Traven acquired a Mexican passport under the name Traven Torsvan, which stated that he was born in Chicago on May 3, 1890. He married his translator Rosa Elena Luján in 1957- she had first met him at a party for the violinist Jascha Heifetz in the 1930's. A decade later Lujan was hired to help him translate a movie script into Spanish.

Traven died on March 26, 1969 in Mexico City. His ashes were flown to Chipas and scattered over Río Jataté. Traven's will stated that he was Traven Torsvan Croves, born in Chicago in 1890 and naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1951. However, Traven's widow, Mrs. Luján, stated in 1990 in an interview: ''He told me that once he died, I could say that he had been Ret Marut, but not before. He was afraid he would be extradited. So I always had to lie, because I had to save my husband.'' (The New York Times, June 25, 1990)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927) - "I know what gold does to men's souls." The bitter fable is set in Mexico. Three down-and-out Americans, Fred C. Dobbs, old Howard, and young Curtin, find gold dust from the mountain. They carry it back to civilisation but during the journey these more or less decent human beings are transformed into jackals by greed and machismo. Dobbs escapes with all the gold but is ambushed by thieves and killed. The thieves, believing that Dobbs was carrying only sand, let the gold dust blow away. - In the film version Humphrey Bogart had one of his finest roles as Fred C. Dobbs, a loser who becomes increasingly paranoid that his partners want to kill him and steal his gold. As a study of greed, the picture only ranks behind Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1925). John Huston won Oscars for his direction and his script adaptation of Traven's novel. Walter Huston in the role of an old prospector won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

For further reading: Anonymity and Death by D.O. Chankin (1975); B. Traven: An Introduction by M. Baumann (1976); The Mystery of B. Traven by J. Stone (1977); Beiträge zur Biographie des B. Traven by R. Recknagel (1977); My Search for B. Traven by J. Raskin (1980); The Secret of Sierra Madre: The Man Who Was B. Traven by W. Wyatt (1980); My Search for B. Traven by J. Raskin (1980); B. Traven: Life and Work by E. Schürer and P. Jenkins (1987); Traven: The Life Behind the Legends by Karl S. Guthke (1991); Traven: Biography of an Enigma by Karl S. Guthke (1991); B.Traven: A Vision of Mexico by H. Zogsbaum (1992); A Study of Traven's Fiction by R.E. Mezo (1993); Mr. Traven, I Presume? by Michael L. Baumann (1997); Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 4); B. Traven: A Bibliography by Edward N. Treverton (1999)

AN DAS FRÄULEIN VON S..., (1916)