- "I, Klaus Kerner, shall rule the world! That Bavarian upstart, Hitler, will kiss my feet!"
- ―Klaus Kerner[src]
Klaus Kerner (alias Samuel Corn and Mr. Smith) was a Prussian colonel in the SS, tasked with investigating the lost city of Atlantis for the Third Reich in 1939.
Biography
In 1939, Klaus Kerner visited Dr. Indiana Jones at Barnett College. Dressed in plain clothes to disguise his true identity, he inquired about artifacts connected with the lost continent and gave him a 'key'. Jones found in the college museum a horned idol, which, when provided the key, revealed a small metallic bead. This Kerner stole. Trying to keep him from escaping, Indy kept his coat, which contained his passport and a copy of National Archeology. They realized that Kerner was interested in Sophia Hapgood and the Jastro Expedition.
Kerner however "visited" Sophia's house in New York and ransacked it looking for her necklace, while she was presenting an Atlantis-themed show as a psychic. Indy went to New York and had to disrupt her presentation to warn her. They entered her home after Kerner left.
Returning to Germany, Kerner gave the items to Dr. Hans Ubermann who later discovered that the artifacts held the key to becoming immortal.
Kerner's demise.
During the course of the ensuing adventure, Kerner had several further scrapes with Jones, now teamed with the psychic, Sophia Hapgood. When the two competing teams arrived at the object of their quest, the God Device, Ubermann made plans to set himself as the Third Reich's immortal leader; but the ambitious Kerner shoved him aside and jumped into the machine first.
Jones mislead Kerner into believing that only one bead would be required in the machine (as opposed to the ten beads theorised by Plato), and when the machine was activated it transformed Kerner into a grotesque horned dwarf.
Unable to live with what he had become, Kerner then committed suicide by throwing himself into a lava flow.
Behind the scenes
- In the game, Kerner is portrayed as a young, tall, strong, Aryan man. In the comics he is portrayed as a somewhat older, thin, mustached individual. His death is also slightly different; in the game he kills himself out of horror at his transformation, whereas in the comic his shape continues to morph until he disintegrates into a puddle of goo.
- Kerner's character and ambitions resemble a Nazi from the other end of the war, Dieterhoffmann from Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny.
Appearances
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis comic
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game