General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Der Schatz im Silbersee

Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake) is a 1962 Western adventure film directed by Harald Reinl, produced by Horst Wendlandt for Rialto Film, and based on Karl May's 1894 novella of the same title. It was the first of the Karl May films of the 1960s and became the highest-grossing German film of its season, launching one of the most successful film series in West German cinema.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	12 December 1962, Universum cinema, Stuttgart¹
Production	Rialto Film (Berlin/Hamburg) with Jadran Film (Zagreb) and S.N.C. (Paris); producer Horst Wendlandt¹
Budget	3.5 million D-Mark, the most expensive West German postwar film to that date⁴
Shooting	Croatia (then Yugoslavia), 6 August to 6 October 1962²
Format	35 mm CinemaScope (1:2.35), Eastmancolor; original length 3027 m, 111 minutes¹
Box office	6.4 million D-Mark; top-grossing film of the 1962/63 season in German cinemas⁴^•²
Honors	Prädikat "wertvoll"; Goldene Leinwand and Bambi, both 1964²

Spoilers

Plot

The story follows the white trapper Old Shatterhand and his blood brother, the Apache chief Winnetou, as they pursue a gang of treasure hunters led by the unscrupulous Colonel Cornel Brinkley. Brinkley has murdered the settler Engel, who carried one half of a treasure map showing the way to a legendary Indian treasure hidden in a cave at Silver Lake; the other half is kept on the Patterson farm, which the gang then attacks, kidnapping Patterson and his daughter Ellen.¹^•⁵

The young Fred Engel, the murdered man's son, joins Winnetou and Old Shatterhand in the pursuit, together with the comic companions Sam Hawkens and Gunstick Uncle. On the hunt for the treasure, Brinkley succeeds in stirring up the Ute Indians against the heroes; only after a duel between Old Shatterhand and the Ute chief is the war axe buried and the pursuit continued to Silver Lake itself.¹ In the finale, the treasure and the villain plunge irretrievably into the depths of a cave, while Fred Engel escapes death thanks to his friends.⁴ A noted set piece departs from Western convention: Brinkley's henchmen are put to flight not by the cavalry but by well-disposed indigenous fighters.⁶

Production

Producer Horst Wendlandt, whose Edgar Wallace crime films were already box-office hits, saw Karl May's novels about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand as his next commercial prospect. Fidelity to the books interested him less than modern action for a young audience; the screenplay by Harald G. Petersson was assembled from several of May's Wild West stories.⁴ The film rights contract for the novel and the Winnetou trilogy was signed in January 1962 between the parties Barthel, Philipsen, and Joachim Schmid of the Bamberg publisher family Schmid for the Karl-May-Verlag.⁷

Casting. For Old Shatterhand, Wendlandt chose the American Lex Barker, known for playing Tarzan, who received 120,000 marks for the role. The 23-year-old Götz George was engaged as co-star for 40,000 marks. Finding a convincing Winnetou took longer: at the 1962 Berlinale closing ball Wendlandt noticed the Frenchman Pierre Brice at a neighboring table, and after protracted negotiations persuaded him to take the laconic, dialogue-light role of the Apache chief.⁴ The supporting cast included Herbert Lom as the villainous Colonel Brinkley, Karin Dor as Ellen Patterson, Marianne Hoppe as Mrs. Butler, Eddi Arent as Lord Castlepool, and Ralf Wolter as Sam Hawkens.¹

Locations and crew. With a budget of 3.5 million D-Mark the film was the most expensive West German postwar production to that point, and it was shot in Croatia between 6 August and 6 October 1962.⁴^•² Cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke captured dynamic CinemaScope panoramas of the Yugoslav landscape, and Martin Böttcher composed the score, which one critic after the premiere credited with half the film's success.⁶^•⁸ The German censor (FSK) passed the film on 7 December 1962 for audiences aged 12 and up; later home-video releases were rated from age 6.¹^•⁹

Reception and box office

The premiere on 12 December 1962 in Stuttgart became a triumph; the crowd was so large that Pierre Brice escaped the theater only in a borrowed police uniform.⁴ With box-office takings of 6.4 million D-Mark the film became the most successful film in Germany of 1962, and it was the top-grossing film of the 1962/63 season in German cinemas.⁴^•² filmportal.de records it as the commercially most successful German film of 1963, and it received the Goldene Leinwand and a Bambi in 1964.¹^•² The German film review board (Filmbewertungsstelle) initially refused the highest rating, but this did not stop the film's popular success.¹⁰

Critics noted that the film did not attempt to copy American Western formulas. Rather, Reinl and his team invented their own Wild West in the Croatian landscape, with dynamic scope cinematography and Böttcher's epic themes; the Deutsches Historisches Museum's program called the result the beginning of popular-cinema history.⁶ The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in January 1963 that Reinl, in the Yugoslav substitute landscape with an international cast, had succeeded in catching up with his Hollywood Western colleagues.¹¹

Significance

The film's success set off the Karl-May film wave of the 1960s. Within a short time numerous further adaptations followed, produced above all by Rialto Film under Wendlandt and by Artur Brauner's CCC Filmkunst, including Winnetou I–III (1963–1965).⁵^•¹² Scholars of the Eurowestern credit the film with kicking off a Europe-wide wave of Westerns produced by European studios for European audiences.¹³ The pairing of Pierre Brice as a morally elevated "noble savage" and Lex Barker as a German mediator between cultures found enormous appeal in postwar West Germany and shaped the West German image of the West, even as the New German Film movement that arose with the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 stripped the genre of cultural prestige within a few years.¹²

The film has remained in circulation. A digitized version of 101 minutes was re-released in German cinemas on 14 December 2022, and a Blu-ray mediabook followed from LEONINE; the German dubbing record lists 21 speaking roles for the Ultra-Film Synchron studio in Berlin.¹^•¹⁴^•¹⁵ The source novel also inspired other adaptations, including the DEFA puppet-animated film Die Spur führt zum Silbersee (1985–1989, premiere 1990).¹⁶

Versions

The original theatrical version ran 111 minutes (3027 m); Rialto's own records give 110 minutes, later cut to 106 minutes, and the 2022 digital restoration runs 101 minutes.¹^•² Foreign titles include Le trésor du lac d'argent (French) and Blago u srebrnom jezeru (Yugoslav).¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026