 Mays' books were popular in Germany and created a mystique about the "Wild West" in German popular culture.The museum opened in 1928 in Radebeul, in the house where May had lived, called Villa Shatterhand.It was founded during a peak of interest in the US frontier and native Americans, fostered in part by the Sarrasani circus, which was headquartered in nearby Dresden, and which was very popular in the 1920s.