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The Week in Germany: Culture

January 11, 2008

Germany Remembers Wilhelm Busch, Great-Grandfather of Modern Comics

Self-Portrait: Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch, considered the great-grandfather of modern comics, died 100 years ago on Wednesday. Often considered macabre and even sadistic, his works would later inspire Hollywood and television.

Pain often takes the spotlight in Wilhelm Busch's drawings, comics and stories. Characters are hung by their noses, shot into the air, rolled flat and beheaded.

For those who are familiar with the popular cartoon characters Tom and Jerry or the contemporary MTV show "Jackass," that's nothing new. But when Busch's best-seller "Max and Moritz" appeared in 1865, it shocked a public that was accustomed to art representing the good and beautiful -- not the grotesque side of humanity.

But "that was what the new middle class in an emerging, industrial, capitalist world wanted to read about," Hans Joachim Neyer, director of the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover, told DW-WORLD.DE.

Despite critics, crudeness sold

Delinquents: Max and Moritz

Although he was sometimes accused of being sadistic, many of Busch's works simply represented the reality he witnessed around him growing up in a small village outside of Hanover. That included rowdy children, drunken clergy -- and plenty of villagers who took their anger out on animals.

"He was a kind of social critic," Neyer said. "Busch was aware that people get a thrill out of killing, and that they sated it by killing animals."

Despite his brutal themes, Busch sold books -- so many that he died a millionaire on Jan. 9, 1908. His most famous work on the adventure of two unruly boys, Max and Moritz, was translated into over 100 languages and read around the world.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of his death, the Hanover museum is planning a special exhibit on Busch as a person set to open on Jan. 13. It follows last year's exhibit on his lesser-known paintings in honor of his 175th birthday year. (Deutsche Welle)

Links:

Wilhelm Busch Museum

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