Thinking Sideways: B Traven

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking sideways. I don't just stories of things we simply
don't know the answer too. Hi there, welcome to a
special Encore presentation of Sticking Sideways. Encore presentation because two

(00:29):
days ago were recorded about of it and then realized
that we hadn't turned our mixer on. It was really
it was like our best episode. You guys. Yeah, I
don't know about that. It wasn't really that much of
a loss. Yeah, well we're here. We're gonna repeat word
for word what we said the other day if we can. Actually,
and before I forget, I'm Joe, joined as always by

(00:52):
and Steve. Okay, so let's solve another mystery before I start.
I also want to give a shout out to Kenji,
who suggested the topic for this episode. Thanks can appreciate it.
Keep them suggestions coming. What are we talking about tonight?
To refresh my memory? It's been a couple of days
talking about talking about be Travina. Who was this guy?

(01:17):
He was a German author, if you haven't heard him before,
who published thirteen books, a lot of short stories. His
books were extremely popular and sold millions of copies. His
first book was called The Cotton Pickers. It was published
in serial format in Yeah, the Cotton Pickers newspaper. Yeah, newspaper,
got it. The second novel is called The death Ship,

(01:39):
which I really liked that title of came out in
ninety six, and all of these books were originally published
in German. By the way, I don't think I mentioned that,
So these were published in Germany. Death Ship became a
movie in nineteen fifty nine. Movie was it called the
death Ship? Yeah? Okay. His third, well, The Treasure of

(02:00):
the Sierra Madre, was published the year after that. I'm
not sure if that was made into a movie or not. Wait,
let me, I'll look on the Google. Okay, I do that.
Definitely not faked at all. U huh, totally doing this, yeah,
in which was starring Humphrey Bogart. Who Yeah, no, Humphrey Bogart.

(02:22):
You know him? Oh, the actor? Yeah, Frankly, my dear,
I don't give it. Yeah, the multi Falcon. Yeah he
played it for her. You can play it for me, sham,
Yeah that guy, Yeah, good old Bogie. Back to be Travin.
His books were very popular in the US, in Mexico
after they were translated into Spanish, and also in Europe.

(02:43):
Quite a few were adapted, as I said, from movies
and TV shows. But what's strange about Travan is that,
despite a very long later career and a huge, huge
fan base, nobody actually knows who he really was, or
where he was born or when he was born. Nobody
really knows, and he was always it was always kind
of coy about the whole thing. I said. Before he

(03:04):
was German. He published his books in German, but some
people think he may actually have been born in Chicago.
Travin himself always claimed to be an American, and even
while he was still alive he died in nineteen sixty nine,
people were trying really hard to figure out who he
actually was and not just read it. Here I'm talking
about journalists and people like that read it's really good

(03:24):
at figuring out who actually better at time, Well, actually
they are journalists do some amazingly hacky things sometimes, Yeah,
and read it. It's just kind of like, O, no, no no, no,
this is obviously this person. Yeah. But yeah, but there's
also the fact that read it wasn't around then, Yeah,
there was it in nineteen fifties. Around it was an

(03:50):
analog form was a card catalog. They had clanked and
clacked a lot like Computer Star Trek. I feel like
the Internet. I'll have to look it up. You know,
the Internet originally was in some form, but Red did
itself was not. Okay, Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I

(04:11):
can argue. I'm not sure when the Darknet started. I'll
do a google. After the show started with Dara, Well,
you know probably what happened. If if Devin's right, is
that the original code name of the Darpinnet when it
was being created was Reddit read it, I find it? Okay, Okay.
Back to Betraven. At the start of his larious success,

(04:34):
he was living in Mexico and he stayed there pretty
much until he died, and he traveled, abrought a little bit,
but basically lived in Mexico. His publishers in Europe and
America never met him. He dealt with them only through representatives.
Warner Brothers brought the rights to the Treasure of the
Sierra Madre in ninety one and they signed up John
Houston to direct. I'm sure you've heard of him. What
else did Houston direct? Do you know? Off the top

(04:55):
of your head. I know Houston did a bunch of stuff.
Just kidd I you know, I'm having a bit of
vaporlock right now. Okay, if you want to know what
he looks like, watch Chinatown. Did you ever see Chinatown
with Jack Nicholson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he plays he
plays the elderly bad guy in Chinatown. Oh okay, here
you're talking about Okay, okay, keeps calling him Mr gets Yeah, nothing,

(05:17):
you tell it's been a long time. I don't quite
get that joke. Yeah, Okay. Nicholson's name was Giddies and
but this guy he kept mispronouncing his name, Mr. Getts.
So if if anybody, lots of our listeners are cackling
hysterically right now. Hilarious. Actually, if you haven't seen Chinatown,
you should see it. It's a classic, really good movie. Okay,
back to I'm getting all of course here. Yeah, he

(05:40):
said he used to set up a meeting with Travan
in nine in Mexico City, but Travin didn't make it
to the meeting. A quotes included, right, yeah. Instead, a
guy named hal Crow showed up with a letter which
was a power of attorney from B. Travn. In the letter,
Travan authorized hal Crows decide all matters regarding the filming
of the novel. So Crows and not be Traven was

(06:03):
present for the filming of the movie on location in Mexico.
That might suggest you would think, well, yeah, a lot
of people that were involved with the film, we're asking
Crows if he was actually be Travin. Crows always said
that he was not. He probably was Travin. I will
never know absolutely for sure. I'm kind of guessing he was.
That most of the crew believed that Crows and Trading

(06:24):
were the same person, although John Houston came to believe
that they weren't the same person for god knows what reason.
But I'm only recoinding this one story because it's so
typical Travin. He was sold. He was always real cagy
about his identity and protecting his privacy. He his motivation
might have been quote the creative person should have no
other biography than his works unquote. And that's from Travin. Yeah,

(06:50):
you know, it's it's unusual for somebody to want to
put their work into the public eye, whether it be
writing or music or whatever it is. For most people,
there's a there's a bit of hubrist there. Yeah, and
to not want to be known. He's well I think

(07:11):
the irony of that is that, you know, if he
if he had truly just written his books and kind
of gone about his life, we would remember his works
likely but nobody would care who this betraven dude was
other than an author. And you know he lived in Mexico. Yeah,
but the fact that he was so cagy with his

(07:33):
true identity and so standoffish it is really the reason
that he's remembered for anything other than his work. Like
you said, ironic, that true irony, real kind of irony,
not like yeah or or it could be he's even
he's even smarter than we realized. And he did this
on purpose so that people would be be, you know,
obsessing over who he really was for many, many decades

(07:54):
after he actually did want to be remembered. That maybe
that's it sneaky. Yeah, Probably the reason he hit from
the public eye is that he was private and he
just wanted people to read his books and not not
think about him. It appears that be Travan arrived in
Mexico or around nineteen twenty four, though it's a little
bit of dispute about this. I think as early as
ninety two. One person says in nineteen fourteen. I've read

(08:18):
something about much earlier, So okay, Thanking fourteen is the
earliest accounting we have of trading arriving in Mexico, whether
it's accurate or not. That's the earliest. Does not appear
to be accurate, but we'll we'll figure out why it
a little bit here. His widow said that he signed
on he got to Mexico by signing I was a
crew member on a ship from England to Norway. She

(08:39):
said it was a death ship. That's what I guess
where he got. And then from Norway you got caught
another ship to Africa, and on the third he went
to Mexico from Africa. Yeah, from Africa. I just believe
he got the inspiration for death ship from his experience
on his long voyage. It makes sense. Yeah, well, the
death ship and I think the cotton pickers are both

(09:01):
deal a lot with what the proletariat experiences in these
terrible working conditions, So it would make sense that that's
where he pulled a bunch of the content from. That
was a big word for you, I know, proletariat. I
googled it. Yeah, sorry, you're not dumb. I'm sorry. I

(09:22):
think It's one of the ironic things about the industrial revolutions.
You hear so many horror stories, but people still flock
from the farms in the fields to go work in
the factories. Well better, because working on the farm sucks
or it sucks. And I think about farms. That's different
from factories is on farms you get these things called
failed harvests, and then after that, you guys, what's called
a famine. At least you got in the factory. Yeah,

(09:45):
even if it pays terrible, pays better than corn. The
farm thing, although it sounds like the living conditions were worse.
But hey, we're way off track. Who cares, We don't
have to do that. Back to this story here is
from Mexico. Travan submitted his novels for publication in Europe
in German in nineteen three, manuscripts of his earlier novels

(10:10):
in English to Alfred A. Knopp in New York for publication,
and he said that he claimed that these were the
original works and the ones previously published were just translations. Yeah,
when did the German versions get submitted to publishers? And anyway,
still nineteen thirty three to submit him so we're talking

(10:32):
half a decade to a decade later, about eight years.
It's just that there's so many weird dates, and there's
so many conflicting things. I just want to try and
keep this linear, is possible, Yeah, with this story, it's
kind of hard to keep all the details straight in
your head. Just confusing that. The thing that's odd about
these translated the English version is people who happen to

(10:54):
read both German and English have said that there are
a lot of differences between the German and the English versions.
It's and the people claim that the German ones contain americanisms,
whatever those are. Yeah, I still don't understand what that is. Colloquialism,
perhaps colloquialisms, although that varies by region. That could be Canadian,

(11:15):
could be Mexican, yeah, but that it can't be Mexican
colloquialisms because who come from Spanish. Yeah. My German vocabulary
consists of about five words, so I'm not reading them
in German to find nor am I. Yeah, but the
americanisms in his books is why so many people believe
that he was born in America. But then here's the

(11:37):
funny part. The English version supposedly contain Germanisms, and I
haven't read, so I can't comment. The only thing I
can think of is is like the Fatherland, statements like that,
things that are just so common to say that you
hear in direct translations. Those are the only things that
I can think of that would be in there that
could be called a Germanism. If he was born in

(12:00):
America but grew up in like a German slum or something,
he would be surrounded by people speaking both German and English.
It's possible that he was fluent in both. It's possible
that when he wrote, he had both Americanisms and Germanisms,
and therefore that accounts. You know, I assume that they're separate.
It's not like the Americanism is replaced with the Germanism

(12:21):
in the English translation. So it's possible that he just
picked up both of them. That's possible that both versions
had both Americanisms, and and that you just notice it
in the other language because hey, it's different. Yeah, yeah,
I guess yeah. And and there are apparently either differences
between the two books too. But he if he did
submit them years after the first one, is maybe he

(12:42):
just revised them a little bit, because you know, I
wanted to make them better and to appeal to the reader. Yeah,
it could be that. Yeah, it appears that Mr Travan
was one of three people Barrick Travan towards then Rhett
Marut or how Crows, or possibly all three. All right,
well we'll skip let's skip right straight into the theories.

(13:04):
We're gonna go. We're gonna start with the less likely
ones first. Okay, yeah, it sounds good. Yeah, Okay, we're
doing like the list thing that we do sometimes we're
just like list a bunch of stupid theories and then
talk about some good ones. Okay, so it looks like
it's perfect. Yeah, we can discuss. We can discuss these
these as much as you guys want to. First, Traman

(13:25):
was an amalgamation of two or more people who collaborated
on the books and the stories. Yeah, it doesn't know
how many. There's not a lot of great works out
there that were written by collaboration. There aren't. That's a
hard thing to do. Yeah, well you only see it
in fantasy sci fi novels, ye, mysteries. Yeah, you do

(13:46):
see a lot of fantasy and sci fi oddly enough. Okay,
so much for that theory. Another theory is that it
was hiding from a dark past, and he apparently was
huh yeah, we'll talk about that in one of the
more serious theory theories if he was. Indeed, some people
believe he was re b Root, which I'm guessing we're
going to get to. Yeah, yeah, okay, next one. Travan

(14:12):
was just a shy guy. Oh shy guy, like, oh,
shy guy, a little blue boom shy guy. Yeah, I
don't get there. That's what they call just playing Nintendo
game sometime. Just I grew up on Nintendo games. Which
blue shy guy? Are we talking? It's not blue? A

(14:32):
little shy guy nature of low load notes from Super
Mario guys. Oh yes, I don't who you're talking about?
Failed Joe. Alright, keep moving. Let's do another theory here,
and that. Another theory is that Travan was the pen

(14:52):
name of Adolpho Lopez Mateos, who was President of Mexico
from nineteen fifty eight to sixty four. And it's probably
I started because his sister, Esperanza Lopez Mateos, translated eight
of Traven's books into Spanish, and he was also be
Travan's literary representative for a while about ten years I
think she was think she was okay, So you can

(15:13):
see how that that rumor might have gotten started. Um,
I don't know what to make of this. I don't
think Mateo spoke German. Maybe he did, but maybe his
sister did. You got another area is that Travan was
the pen name of Esperanza Lopez Mateos herself. Yeah, yea,
so maybe she spoke German. Well, but do we know
what language she translated the it into Spanish from did

(15:38):
she translated from English? Which would make sense that she
was fluent in English and Spanish. I know she spoke
eight languages, but I'm just thinking on the order of
likelihood what languages she would speak. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know that German would be that highland in
that it might be maybe I don't know, And that's

(15:58):
why I'm asking. I mean in terms of like large
world players, right, Germany is a pretty big world power.
And if you're trying to study up on languages based
on who you were most likely to have to communicate with,
particularly if you were the president's sister, I would say
Germans a solid choice, English, Spanish, German, probably some pan

(16:20):
Asian Japanese, Chinese, probably Italian. Yeah, I don't know. That's
why I'm asked. I would say it's I would say
that it's a pretty good chance that she spoke German.
I don't know fluently enough to translate full novels. But
that's really I mean, yeah, you got another language, really
really well. Do we know when she was his his agent,

(16:41):
his representative. I believe it was from like nineteen one. Okay,
I could see German being on the list at that time. Okay,
I'm just just asking anyway. Our next theory, this is
a good one. Traman was actually Ambrose Bears. Actually, you
guys have heard of this same rings a bell? Yeah,

(17:01):
but I can't think of who ring a bell from
Tuesday or Yeah. I know it's a literary figure. It's
famous author and satirist. Yeah. Yeah. Beers went to Mexico
during the Mexican Revolution in nineteen thirteen because he wanted
to check it out, perhaps report on it. And I'm
not sure, and he vanished without a trace. Another one

(17:24):
solid mystery. Huh oh, yeah, that one not me. Yeah,
he banished. Problem with this theory is that he was
born in eighteen Yeah, so that kind of he'd be
an old old man seven years old, so I think
we can discount this one. Yeah, Now there was that

(17:47):
he Tradman was the illegitimate son of Emperor of Villenham.
The second. Okay, what's the foundation on this? I mean why,
I can't think of anything other than that, Like during
like World War One and so like that he was
he was able to publish his little his little agitation
magazine whatever it was, called The Brickmaker, and one paper

(18:08):
was in short supply and being rationed. So they thought, well,
maybe he's got royal connections. But that ties in with
a different theory about who betrayven is right. Yeah, it's
not sure that he was the one who was publishing
The Brickmaker, right, No, it's not. No, not really, that's true.
A lot of people believe that he was, sure, but
it's not. I mean, that's also just a theory. That's

(18:29):
just yeah, stronger, stronger, possibility, stronger. The next theory traveling
was Jack London. Jack London died in at the age
of forty, but some people think he faked his death,
moved to Mexico and continued his writing career, and then
died fifty years later. Again there's the old old man issue.

(18:55):
That's that's a little more credible than a hundred seven.
But they're okay, what what officially did London die from? You?
Either of your overdose? Well, some people say that I
heard that he had an internal infection. I think the
official cause of death on his death certificate was drug

(19:16):
over He was taking morphine for the pain because he
had some serious salem. So I could see where it
be seriously easy to Actually a lot of people do it,
but particularly at that time. Yeah, self medication was the
way to medicate. Well yeah, and that's terrifying. Morphine and
stuff like that easy to do. If I'm never in

(19:36):
the hospital and they say would you like morphine? My
answer will be no. I will scream thank you. But
my question is, isn't there I swear there's something about
images or accountings of people who were who saw London's
body after because he there was an autopsy done. Wasn't

(19:57):
there on London? I think so? And I we're I've
seen something about people having seen the body post the autopsy,
So that would that would lend me to say to
poopoo on this one? Yeah, not an okay theory because
of that I think it's a bad theory. The theory.
I mean, there's no particular reason he needed to do this,
and he was already successful writer, yeah and he was,

(20:20):
and he was he wasn't against sick and very poor
health and taking morphine, So that at least me to
believe that he probably just accidentally o'deed or had a
natural causes and yeah, he had no real motive death.
Uh see. Another another's last of the loopie theories. B
Traven was a pen name of a guy named August

(20:41):
Beblje and I might be mispronouncing them, who was a
German from Hamburg who wasn't an adventurer and actually did
spend time in Mexico. But of course I don't know
why he came up with this theory and proposal because
Belge died in the Spanish Civil War in the late thirties,
so probably not him. Probably not yeah, yeah, unless he
faked his own death. Yeah, that could have been it.

(21:02):
But again, a couple of these are faked death scenarios,
and I don't I don't understand why. Okay, I can
see somebody having a big political shift or an ideology
shift and changing the things that they write but I

(21:24):
can't see somebody doing that and saying this is gonna
cause a firestorm. So instead I'll just die and come
back as somebody else so I don't damage that other reputation.
That's that's an odd train of thought. I think in general,
fixed death theories are kind of bunk in my book. Okay,

(21:48):
I think it does happen. I've done it a few times. Yeah,
but don't need to get away from girlfriends pretty much
to escape my debtor. Yeah, government, Yeah, let's dive into
some meteor theories like good ones. Yeah. Better, you know,
I'll see how you like him. I thought we were talking,
like knew were there. I'm sorry, that's what I thought.

(22:11):
I'm sorry. All right, what do we got? The first
one of the documents to the reet ma Rout thing,
as I mentioned before, and as like foreshadowed, honestly, yeah,
well this is actually it was actually the connection between
ret mar uts is some claim was made by an

(22:31):
East German author named Rolf rec Nagel, but actually it
was actually made by one of his fellow revolutionaries, a
guy named Eric Mousseum. You probably wondering about revolutionaries. He
got you kind of ret Rout Actually appeared on the
scene in the early nineteen hundreds in Germany. He was
an actor, occasionally wrote plays, also directed plays, danced and

(22:51):
all that stuff, and then eventually started Yeah, I guess,
I guess whatever theater was like in Germany in those days,
that was in the live so I don't know. Yeah,
Eventually he got involved in politics and joined up with
a bunch of a bunch of revolutionaries in Bavaria, and
one of them was Eric Moosem, who and read My

(23:12):
Roots had a distinctive writing style that and Eric was
some recognize that, and it it first made the connection. So
a nice German author named Ralph rock Nagel, who I
just mentioned, wrote a book about in nineteen sixties six,
we did some while while Travan was still alive, right,

(23:35):
unless he faked his death in sixty to get away
from this, So I'm not sure that this is Obviously
the sixties sixty six is still I'm fairly late in
the game. I mean, people back in the forties where
we're trying to guess what his real identity was. But
this this just made it like sort of flare up
anew And actually, I guess I guess, actually you could
say that it was back in the twenties when people

(23:56):
actually because it was actually the publication of the Death
Ship in Germany that started this, because that's when Eric
Lewis Um recognized his writing style. Let's get back into
what he was up to in Bavaria. I said, he
performed on stage and at the After the outbreak of
World War One, he became politically active and he founded
an anarchist magazine slash newspaper called There's Sigl Brenner, which

(24:18):
it literally means the brickmaker. Yeah, what we're talking about earlier, Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
And then on Wikipedia says brick burner. A lot of
people have it that as brick burner, but it actually
means brickmaker in German. Why is that? Because the word
brenner in German means burner, but if you pair it
up with the word brick, it's it becomes brickmaker. Germans weird,

(24:39):
We thank you. Yeah, well but yeah, okay, so I
didn't grew up speaking German, thought, so, yeah, I founded
this anarchist magazine. And after the proclamation of the Bavarians
Sylvia a Republican Munich, they actually started and had this

(25:02):
little revolution in Munich in Bavaria, and that happened in
nineteen nineteen my Root Root was made director of the
press division and he became a member also the propaganda
committee of the quote unquote government, which some called the
fake Soviet Republic. And it was during this time that
we got to know Eric Moussum and he was one
of the Eric Moussam was one of the leaders of

(25:23):
the anarchists in Munich. And when the death Ship started
to appear in other ones, that's when Mussum compared his
writing style with the Brickmaker articles and decided they must
have been written by the same person. So I'm back
to Rolph Rachnagel, the guy in nineteen six in the
nineteen sixties who wrote this book about it. Yeah, he
tracked out a whole bunch of those revolutionaries as many

(25:45):
as he could to get their opinions on that and
and find out what they knew, and then wrote a
book about it. And they all said, hey, this is
the same writing style. Okay, So it doesn't necessarily prove
much so well, no, because it's forty years later, fifty
years later. Oh no, no, it's not that far. Well though,
if if this, if this revolution takes place in nineteen nineteen,

(26:07):
that's when is really active, and they may not have
read any of his stuff since then. But I thought
that that Eric was soon read the read the test
Ship at least like not too long after it was published,
which would have been n So we're talking eight years, yeah,

(26:29):
in seven years. Yeah, It's just it's it's when there's
any kind of time. If I've got two documents in
front of me, totally can see the similarities in style,
but if I'm trying to recollect, because that's that's my
my issue with uh, these guys that were in this
movement is did they have documents that were supposedly written

(26:53):
by Marut to then compare against or was it just
and this really sounds like that other guy. That's that's
my question. I don't know if there's any if there's
any correlation, or if it's just memory. There might have
been well, I don't know, there might have been copies
of the brickmakers still laying around that hadn't been recycled yet.
I mean, that's that seems like, you know, if that
was something that you were proud of in your history,

(27:14):
you would scrap book that. I mean, you know whatever,
the dude early nineteen hundred equivalent of scrap booking is.
But you would keep that sort of stuff. If that
was a publication and a movement that you were really
a part of, you keep that and you can pull
it out and say, oh, hey, remember when we did this. Yeah,
I just I just want to know if it was.
And I'm sure that we'd have to read the book

(27:37):
by it's wreck nagel, okay, And maybe he lays out
that he you know, they had these two things to compare.
I'm just I don't know that also, I guess in fairness.
The other thing that I would point out is that
just because the book was published eight years after doesn't
mean that he was writing it eight years after, Right,
he could have been writing it the whole time, because

(27:58):
it takes a while to get stuff blish, it takes
a while to write now, so it could have been
within a couple of years that he had been writing that.
So the style could have been quite similar, particularly if
he had a really I don't know, bold way of writing. Yeah,
I'm not going to dispute that at all. So their
little revolution didn't last long. Essentially, they the White Guards

(28:18):
came in and rated them in May nineteen nineteen, and
that was the end of the very Soviet Republic. They
lasted a couple of months. Yeah. Yeah, Ret was arrested
along a bunch of the others and supposedly they were
going to execute them for treason. But I don't know
if they actually we're planning on doing that or not.
But he's something I managed to escape, and so maybe
they were going to execute. And when it's then his

(28:39):
captors decided, yeah, we're just gonna let you go. Excided
really don't want to see a gate head cut off,
and so you managed to sneak off, and he spent
the next several years laying well in Germany and Austria,
and then eventually, of course, as we know, he made
his way to Mexico. Okay, okay, And I was talking
about another guy fight fight I fight. It's it's like

(29:01):
that yogurt, right, fight age. It's that Greek yogurtge fight age.
It says on the front of the yogurt. Okay, I'm
clearly the only lady and want to the Greek yogurt
in this room. Yeah, I think so. Oh my goodness, sorry,
all the blank look like you've never heard of Greek

(29:21):
yogurt before. I've never heard of yogurt before. What is
this stuff you call yogurt? Sorry, I'm sorry, let's just
talk about check. So this came out because in late
nineteen tried to travel to Canada through England. But this
is after having escaped. Yeah, this ise He escaped in

(29:42):
in nineteen nine and hung around Europe laying low because
he was wanted by the authorities for treason. Tried to
travel to Canada, got busted in England for being a
foreigner without a residence permit. You got to spend two
and a half months in jail. Man at that time.
During interrogations ASTs with the cops, he's told told them
that his real name was Herman Otto Albert Maximilian fig name.

(30:09):
I would not have wanted to have to write that
on my homework as a kid. Imagine writing checks. It's
time to pay my boils. Christ I hate the sime
of the mom. He also said that he's from the
city of Schreibus in Germany, which is in Poland today.
And a couple of BBC journalists and Will Wyatt and
Robert Robinson that was her British names. Yeah, British. Yeah,

(30:32):
they found they found out about his jail interrogation and
this claim of this name in the city. So they
want to Poland where Scribus is is not now a
new name too, And they checked the local records and
they confirmed that his claims were apparently true. What year
was this that, Oh you know, that was in the sixties.
I believe I could be wrong. Yeah, And they had

(30:53):
photos of Reton Root and b Travan apparently Retroot he
was photographed when he was when he was busted. And
I've seen that picture, and I've seen the pictures of Betraven,
the supposed pictures of Betrayal looks very similar. Could be
the same guy. So he had a couple of siblings
still alive out of fives did and they interviewed the

(31:15):
sisters and showed him pictures of the Reton Root and
be Travin and they appeared to recognize him. Appeared. Yeah,
I don't know if they actually said like, oh, yeah,
that's my mom. That's how long lost brother, because he
disappeared years and years before. Yeah, okay, so how many
years like it happened kids sixties, We're talking forty years. Yeah, yeah,

(31:38):
he so he disappeared around nineteen o four, nineteen five. Yeah,
while we're years Yeah, yeah, memory gets a little you know,
remory fades a little bit, and so they never actually
said it was just kind of like yeah, and I
think that. Yeah. So if let's see, like the picture
of Reton Root, which I believe it was the police

(31:58):
photograph would have been taken, Um, if he disappeared, let's
stay eight, he would have aged eighteen years, maybe it
still would have been recognizable. I mean, I guess there's
something to be said for uh, you know, that dude
looks like Uncle Jerry. You know, he looks he looks
like he belongs in our family. He looks like the

(32:19):
family lineage. So yeah, it might be him. And we
had a brother who disappeared who looks kind of like
he might end up looking like that. So the other
thing we need to keep in mind is photography at
the time is not what we're all used to as
photography today. The picture is not bad, but you know,
film photography, it degrades. And if it's if the film

(32:45):
is a little dirty and it's not processed right, those
things can get a little fuzzy and a little off.
So it's um, oh, what is it? They it's kind
of that vignette field that you'll see where they kind
of soften every thing. That's what it's. It harkens back
to is the day when it wasn't easy to get
a perfectly good in focus shot and it was at

(33:07):
hard back in the day. Well, the thing I found
a little odd about this is that if they recognized
him as their brother, long lost brother, you think they say,
oh my god, can you tell me where he is
so we can find him? They didn't do that. Well,
that's why I suspect that it was just kind of
a look of recognition on their faces. You know, journalists
took to mean that they recognized him, and since they

(33:29):
were Yeah, as we were talking about earlier journalists, maybe
not the best. Yeah, they cut some corners sometimes, let's
face it. Anyway, back to Otto, he disappeared in nineteen
o four oh five, and so it looks like d
of this series that out of five adopted Rett Maroot
as a stage name and or and also a nomdue
gear when he later became a revolutionary. That's your favorite phrase. Yeah,

(33:53):
some people have disputed this because they're saying you couldn't
have been more to German because there's too many Americanisms
in his writing. Again, I don't want an americanism is
so I don't know if the Oddifa thing. It seems
like everywhere that Traven went or ret mad or whoever
you like, to spin a big cloud of bs and
leave leave a big leave a lot of false trails,

(34:15):
which if he didn't want to be found, really two
ways to not be found hiding the cave or tell
lies and just continue to tell a different story to
every person you meet. And he seems to have gone
with the ladder and not the former, which would explain
why it's so hard to figure out who he is.

(34:37):
Let's get on to the next theory. This um a
guy named Traven towards Fan. Traven towards Fan. So, as
you remember, I was talking about the filming of the
Treasure this year of Modred, for which hal Crows showed
up and was a technical adviser to the film. After that,
after the filming was all wrapped up, Crows disappeared, and
oh yeah, he just vanished. Mexican journey others named Luis

(35:00):
Spota tried to find him and somehow I guess he,
I guess he bribed somebody at a bank or something
like that got some information which put put put him
onto another guy solid reporting. Well, you never know what
what's where the trail is gonna lead you. But he
found another man who apparently connected to Crows. This guy
lived on the name of Travan tourist Fan, and he
lived near Acapulco, like on the outskirts of Acapulco. So

(35:24):
Spota investigated tourist Fan and found out that he got
a Foreigners ID I D Card in Mexico in nineteen
thirty and a Mexican I D Card in nineteen forty two,
and on both on the applications for both of these things,
he claimed to be um, an American born engineer, and
he claimed that his date of birth was March fifth,

(35:45):
eet place of birth Chicago, And according to some records
that he found, tourists Fan arrived in Mexico in nineteen fourteen,
which I'm still scratching my head, it's from the US
because if he was born in Chicago, he would have
traveled there from the US. Yeah, So of course, if
this is true, if the tour can't be Ret Marut,

(36:05):
because Ret Marut was documentedly in Germany. Yeah, yeah, although
it could be ret Marut lying about when he got
to Mexico and from where he came to try and
cover up his kind of bad past. You know that,
you wouldn't You wouldn't necessarily say, oh, yeah, I I'm

(36:28):
from Germany and I came here and I was in
jail and I started a revolution and from a nation
and was arrested for treason. But the timeline doesn't work.
Why because if Marut was in trouble in but the
documentation shows that tours Van arrived in Mexico in nineteen fourteen.

(36:52):
Just as a point, how did how did the journalist
get that information? So? Al right, Well, it is he
could have just lied his application for him too. I mean,
I don't know that. They don't know what official record means.
If official record is the application he submitted in n

(37:13):
sure he could have totally liked if it's some kind
of immigration form or something like that. Could have bribed
it or it could be real. It's hard to tell,
especially in this time. Yeah, and you could really write
whatever you wanted. Yeah yeah. Next step in his in
Bota's journalistic journey, he bribed the mailman who delivered Towards
Fans mail and I love it. That's just the way

(37:37):
it goes down there, and I guess so pretty much
all around the world actually. But when he opened some
of those uh, some of those envelopes, he found out
the tours Fan received royalties payables you've done other than
ben Yeah, from a man named Joseph Wider in Zurich,
which is the guy that was publisher. But to ask
Towards Fan if he be traven and how crows were

(37:59):
all the same in person, of course, Tourist Fan denied it,
and supposedly emphatically in fact, even kind of angrily. But
if you're trying to hide that would be and caught
off guard. I could see that being a normal reaction. Yes, again,
this is not like those journalists before. I said that.
Tourist Spend finally admitted indirectly to being the writer, though

(38:21):
he doesn't say exactly how he admitted indirectly. Yeah, yeah, hinky.
So Spoda published an article about all that's a nice
long article, I understand. I haven't read it in the
newspaper Maniana in August, and Tourists Fand published an angry
denial in the newspaper boy A week later tomorrow and

(38:42):
today you love I love it. Yeah, and then and then,
of course, not long after that tourist fan disappeared. So
I mean, all these disappearing people, how Crows, we actually
have like five mysteries and one mystery, right right, all
these disappearances. Okay, but one mysterious disappearance was sold because

(39:03):
Haw Crows who disappeared while he reappeared in Acapulco. Yeah,
and he wrote a few screen adaptations of B. Traven's books,
and of course also acted as his representative. He had
a secretary named Rosa Elena Louhan and eventually married her
in nineteen fifty seven, and towards Vaughan was also in

(39:24):
Acapulco earlier than that. I'm just seeing that going, oh wait,
maybe he just liked Acapulco and he took off for
a while and came back. Or maybe if it's the
same person, if we're gonna if we're gonna stitch this
altogether as the same person, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Between his marriage and nineteen fifty seven and his death

(39:44):
in nineteen sixty nine, Haw Crows, I guess they were
happily married. Alcroz stayed hal Crows and until he died. Then,
on the day of his death, his wife, Rosa Alien
and Luhan of course, as you know, held a press
conference and announced her Husban hal Crow's real name was
Travan towards Fan Crows and that he had been born

(40:05):
in Chicago in May eighteen to a Burton towards Fan
and Dorothy Crow's. Okay. She also said that he had
used the pseudonyms be Traven and Haw Crow's during his life,
and then some months later she con learned that be
Traven had a deed been Rehet Marut earlier in his life.

(40:25):
So it's a mystery solved. Uh wait wait, okay, So
he was born in May of eighteen, according to this,
in Chicago, and then I know, um, sorry, he's never
left um, and then he became Rehet Marut like immediately

(40:47):
after that and went to he would have somehow got
himself into Germany and become Reet Maud. Okay, but he
was never he was never auto fi age right, Yeah,
I don't think so now, but and I think my
understanding of how the whole thing worked is he was
born in Chicago. His parents were actually I think from Germany,

(41:09):
and they moved back to Germany, and so they lived
maybe in the first ten years of his life in
America something like that, and then moved to Germany. I
would explain a lot of stuff. I would explain lots yeah, Okay,
well if that's right, if that's correct, yeah, and that interpretation, okay,
I'm on board. And then he then he eventually I
gets himself, got himself a stage name, and then you know,
becomes a revolutionary and then has to leave Europe and

(41:31):
goes to Mexico. Then where by the way, you know,
he's wanted. Apparently he would be an American citizen, not
a German citizen. So I don't know, if you're an
American living in Germany, if you can, if you if
you can commit treason, maybe that's why he didn't end
up it would be yeah, yeah, maybe that's why he
faked being born in America because you know, or maybe

(41:53):
that's why he faked being what is what's his name, otto,
Maximilian Lionaire, the Greek yogurt guy. Okay, what Now, there's
there's one that you you haven't included here that I
I found odd, but I wanted to bring up, which
was I'm not saying who Betraven was from the outset

(42:18):
accept that the theory that I saw said that he
was from Germany originally and was in Mexico, and he
met an American who wrote these stories and somehow bought
or stole them off of that individual and then rewrote
them into German, which is why there are americanisms in

(42:42):
the German version, and then went back and said, oh wait,
now I need to make this match my manuscript. Later,
so when converted that English back or rewrote the English
version in his own English version, that's where all the
germanisms came from. Now, I again, this is one that
I've seen profit on the internet a number of times,

(43:04):
and I don't buy. But it's out there, and I
think that we should at least acknowledge. I suppose we
should have. I didn't include that one because it just
seems so even less supportable than almost all the others
out there. I think it's more supportable than Jack London. Yeah,

(43:27):
but it just seems like it just seemed to me
like it was basically speculation more than anything else, and
completely I totally agree with that. Yeah. So yeah, I
don't know. So the mystery is solved or is it
not at all, because yeah, she could have been lying
to her the whole time, or maybe that if you
can't if you can can't lie to anybody at your wife. Yeah,

(43:51):
but you can lie to your wife and people do
it all the time. So I can see this guy
being like, yeah, we're dating. I'm just going to make
myself sound mysterious. So she's really interested in me. I
can see this. I can see this play out in
a thousand So it's really well for your upcoming now

(44:11):
the show. She does think that I am an international
millionaire and I don't come to record a podcast. I
am dealing with my trust Funday, Well, we'll make sure
support that. We'll keep your secret. We'll keep it. Yeah.
And also he might have told her the whole truth too,

(44:31):
and I bet, but also expressed his wishes to for
her to continue spreading the fog of BSY also on
his behalf after his death. Yeah. And she, by the way,
she lived until two thousand nine. I believe she lived
a good long. She was a lot younger. I was
gonna say she must have been a young woman when
he married her. Yeah, she was quite a bit younger

(44:51):
than him. Yeah, Yeah, it had to be Yeah, so
mry so uh okay, keep saying you keep saying, oh,
I don't really don't know that, you know, for any
of the big mystery here is white people care so much.
I'm going through this. I was really struck by the

(45:13):
fact that so many people devoted like years of their
lives to researching and tracking down and traveling to various
places and checking records and interviewing people and just to
try to figure out who he was. People get stuck
on weird mysteries. We've experienced it, the US three. We
get stuck on some weird stuff sometimes. How many times
have any of us brought up the same mystery to

(45:34):
the others? It happens, oh yeah, and then you know,
one of us will be like, oh, we should do
this mystery, and you guys will always be like, no, Devon,
that's dumb, Joe, We've already done that one. We don't
need to follow up up. I don't care what records
you requested. Yeah, all right, So I need to go
to the bathroom, So I'm gonna go. I gotta get

(45:56):
some of the ministralia out of the way here so
I can shut off the mixer and go to the bathroom. Okay.
Find us on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast
dot com. You can leave comments. We have links to
various articles and stuff. They're related to the subject matter.
And of course you can download the episodes directly from there,
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(46:23):
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You're gonna want to leave a comment and review. Please
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(46:43):
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(47:07):
it was more. And of course there is email. Send
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website that people can just click on and that'll take

(47:29):
them straight to it. So we haven't done this a
lot recently. We've been kind of moving away from it.
But I do want to just briefly mention a pretty
cool piece of listener mail we got a couple of
weeks ago. No, it's just been a week. Well by
the time this comes out. Yeah, anyways, it from Bowie Poag.

(47:56):
Do you guys know who that is? Of course I
do you know who that is? Yeah, listeners may remember
this is the Reddit user who claims that he knows
who's responsible for the Max Headroom Max Headroom broadcast intrusions.
And he I'm not going to actually read like verbate
him anything that he said, but mostly, well, actually that's
not true. Well let's see. Well, what I like is

(48:18):
that we didn't reach out about No, he reached out. Yeah,
he tracked us down and he said, just listen to
your podcast, and I wanted to drop you line that says,
I think you did an excellent job covering it, and
I was glad that you appreciate approached the theories the
way you did with good skepticism and skeptical skepticism and
critical thinking that and thank you for not ripping on

(48:39):
me for refusing to disclose any names. And then he
kind of goes on we had a pretty good conversation
about it, but I just thought it was kind of
cool he actually reached out to us, and thanks, Bowie.
I don't know if you actually are listening to all
of it or you just like track down Max Headroom
related stuff or whatever, but I was glad. I was
glad to here that he appreciated us, because I think,

(49:02):
you know, there's there's no way of proving anything, and uh,
it's better to just protect people. Well, I yeah, again,
I wanted this is one we've hung onto for a
couple of weeks too that I wanted to follow up with.
This is a bit of listener mail and a correction,
kind of my correction because I was wrong. We Uh,

(49:23):
we got an email from Tony Ortega over at the
Raw Story, who has done a lot of reporting on
scientology and if anybody remembers or has recently listened to
the Miss Michelle Miss Cabbage episode, we had said we
weren't sure about a fact and so we guessed at it,

(49:45):
and Tony was kind of enough to reach out and
correct us on it, which is we had questioned if
anybody has listened to it sea Org. We couldn't remember
if sexual relations were allowed for any reason. Turn Out
we had said we thought they probably were. No, they're
not at all. I think we said that they were
allowed for propreational appropriate that's what it was, propreationally. Turns

(50:09):
out no, no, no, no whatsoever. So I was I
really appreciated Tony taking the time to reach out to this.
And there was some again with the same as the
email from Bowie, there was some other stuff there, but
it was really nice to have somebody who had done
a bunch of research and reporting to follow up with us.
And if we ever do anything on scientology again, I

(50:31):
know we're going to reach out. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't
think we're going to be doing anything more about science.
Maybe we'll see, we'll see what comes up. But yeah, yeah,
so yeah, good listener mails, months, listener mails sending us emails.
We get lots of emails. Yeah, so don't be offended
if we don't read your email out out loud, because

(50:53):
we can't really read that many and then we can't
reply to all of me that we just well, no, actually,
we replied to every single email. Though it may take
us a week to get back to people. I make
sure that every email, if none of us have grabbed it,
gets responded to, so doesn't fall through the cracks. But

(51:13):
there's so many coming in. There's just no way that
we could. There's only three of us. Um yeah, so
for now, at least we'll get back to you. It
might it might be finally reached the point where we're
gonna have to hire a bot to reply to our email.
No never, I only swear that we will never never

(51:34):
going to use a bot. Nope, nope. So thanks Joe.
That's everything. Huh. Jo is pretty much everything. We could
replace him with a bot. Feel free. I've got better
use for my time. Oh no, don't pay too much
money on that note, shall we? I think we shall

(51:57):
yea to lou everybody, see you next week, by bye bye.
And by the way, you're gonna love next week's episode.
We're going to tackle the big