Karl May (1842-1912) was the fifth of 14 children from a poor weaving family in Ernstthal/Saxony. He was initially expelled from his studies at the teacher training college after he embezzled candle remnants. Later, he was able to continue his education but only worked for 14 days in his profession before being accused of theft again and removed from the list of candidates. Due to theft, fraud, and swindling, he was repeatedly arrested and detained for months in the following years. He spent the years between 1870 and 1874 in the Waldheim penitentiary. It was only many years after the publication of his meticulously researched Oriental cycle that Karl May actually traveled to the Orient. For a long time, Karl May was one of the most-read German authors. He died in 1912 in Radebeul. Hans Wollschläger, born in 1935, was a translator, writer, historian, religious critic, rhetorician, essayist, and literary historian. He received many awards, including the Friedrich-Baur Prize for Literature from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Hans Wollschläger passed away in 2007.