The Sherlock Holmes stories originated in English print media, but within the first decades after their initial publication they travelled to other countries – and other media such as theatre and silent film. National, non-British adaptations for other media became popular in Denmark as well as in Germany in the years around 1910 and travelled between the two countries. These adaptations constitute an important and overlooked part of the Danish-German cultural exchange in the highly
entangled media culture of the time.
German actor and playwright Ferdinand Bonn wrote, staged, and performed Holmes plays, one of which was staged in Copenhagen in 1907. Bonn was hired as a scriptwriter and actor by Nordisk Films Kompagni a few years later and played Holmes in several non-extant, German films. Based on archival studies, the paper takes the case of Bonn as its key example and examines these transnational entanglements of the Sherlock Holmes universe.