Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich was a German historian and novelist, born in Munich in 1901. She is known for her scholarship on ancient history and for novels centered on Lakota characters, including Die Söhne der Großen Bärin and Das Blut des Adlers.
During the Nazi period, Welskopf-Henrich helped people facing persecution and assisted concentration camp prisoners. After the war, she pursued an academic career in Berlin. She became a professor of ancient history at Humboldt University in 1960 and a full member of the German Academy of Sciences in 1964.
Her research papers, correspondence, and other records are described in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities archive.
Sources: Biography; Academy archive
Die Söhne der Großen Bärin, known in English as Sons of the Great Bear, first appeared in 1951 and later became a six-volume work. Its central character, Harka, grows from a boy into a leader.
Her son Rudolf emphasized that these novels are literature informed by history, and encouraged readers to listen to Native people telling their own stories.
Sources: Biography; Deutsche Biographie; Interview with Rudolf Welskopf
Das Blut des Adlers is a separate five-novel cycle. In his interview about his mother's work, Rudolf Welskopf described how her visits to North America and her interest in contemporary Native lives helped inspire these novels.
Sources: Interview with Rudolf Welskopf
Between 1963 and 1974, Welskopf-Henrich traveled to the United States and Canada. Those visits and the people she met became an important part of her later writing. She died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1979.
Sources: Biography; Interview with Rudolf Welskopf
Harka: Trail of the Rising Sun is the project bringing the story of Sons of the Great Bear into English through books, graphic novels, film, and television. Visit the project website for its current announcement and email updates.
About Harka and the English adaptation
Sources: Harka project announcement