THE MAN WHO INVENTED HIMSELF: OTTO FEIGE ALIAS RET MARUT ALIAS B. TRAVEN (1882-1969)

Abstract

In 1926 the writer B. Traven let it be known that "my personal history is my own affair which I want to keep to myself". In 1930, using the name Traven Torsvan, he acquired Mexican citizenship. For business appointments he slipped into the role of his supposed agent, Hal Croves, who claimed to have been authorised by Traven to negotiate the rights to the books as well as marketing deals. For decades, journalists, scholars and innumerable readers, all over the world, have studied his game of identities.Traven firmly refused to satisfy the increasing curiosity of the steadily growing audience for his books that wanted to know more about his biographical background. 

He claimed that he was unpretentious and unambitious, however, he was not being modest but he was aware that the realism in his novels had to be authenticated by his own experiences. Stylised descriptions where he "is riding through the jungle and a virgin forest, wading through a swamp and a morass, swimming across rivers and climbing up steep cliffs" are all elements that create an atmospheric scenario that shape the genre picture of the jungle writer that has remained up to this day.