Max and Moritz

Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch was a German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter, publishing comic illustrated cautionary tales. Busch drew on contemporary parochial and city life, satirizing Catholicism, Philistinism, strict religious morality and bigotry. His comic text was colourful and entertaining, using onomatopoeia, neologisms and other figures of speech, and led to some work being banned by the authorities. Busch was influential in both poetry and illustration, and became a source for future generations of comic artists. The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Busch's Max and Moritz, one of a number of imitations produced in Germany and the United States. His 175th anniversary in 2007 was celebrated throughout Germany. Busch remains one of the most influential poets and artists in Western Europe. (source: WIkipedia) Max and Moritz is an illustrated story in verse; highly inventive, blackly humorous tale, told entirely in rhymed couplets, written and illustrated by Wilhelm Busch. It is among the early works of Busch, nevertheless it already features many substantial, effectually aesthetic and formal regularities, procedures and basic patterns of Busch's later works. Many familiar with comic strip history consider it to have been the direct inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids. The German title satirizes the German custom of giving a subtitle to the name of dramas in the form of 'A Drama of ... acts', which became dictums in colloquial usage for any event with an unpleasant or dramatic course, e.g. Federal presidential Elections - Drama in Three Acts.