Abstract

The phenomenon of racism continues to be a serious problem in contemporary society, and this not only in the Western world. While countless studies have already addressed this issue, the present paper examines a highly popular German novella from 1950 which is situated in the Northern Territory of Australia where a white sheriff, who is in charge of maintaining law and order for his authorities, begins to realize fundamental problems with the racist ideology within his world. A. E. Johann’s “Der Mann der sein Wort gab” portrays this protagonist first as someone clearly marked by western, racist concepts regarding the Indigenous population. In the course of time, however, he realizes fundamental conflicts and wrongdoings by the white authorities and eventually disappears from view as a protest against the dominant racist culture he himself used to fight for. The Romantic notion of the ‘noble savage’ certainly matters here, but it undermines our common understanding of the implied racism in modern adventure narratives.