Wilhelm Busch
| Wilhelm Busch | |
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Self-portrait, 1894
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| Born | Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch 15 April 1832 Wiedensahl, Kingdom of Hanover (today Lower Saxony) |
| Died | 9 January 1908 (aged 75) Mechtshausen, Province of Hanover, German Empire (today part of Seesen, Lower Saxony) |
| Nationality | German |
| Education | Hanover Polytechnic, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Beaux-Arts Academy, Antwerp, Academy of Fine Arts, Munich |
| Genre | Caricature, painting, poetry |
| Notable works | Max and Moritz |
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Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (15 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was a German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter. He published comic illustrated cautionary tales from 1859, achieving his most notable works in the 1870s. Busch's illustrations used wood engraving, and later, zincography.
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. The Wilhelm Busch Prize and the Wilhelm Busch Museum help maintain his legacy. His 175th anniversary in 2007 was celebrated throughout Germany. Busch remains one of the most influential poets and artists in Western Europe.
In the late 18th century Johann Georg Kleine, Wilhelm Busch's maternal grandfather, settled in the small village of Wiedensahl. There, in 1817, he bought a thatched half-timbered house, where Wilhelm Busch was to be born about 15 years later. Amalie Kleine, Johann's wife and Wilhelm Busch's grandmother, kept a shop in which Busch's mother Henriette assisted while her two brothers attended high school. When Johann Georg Kleine died in 1820, his widow continued to run the shop with Henriette.
At the age of 19 Henriette Kleine married surgeon Friedrich Wilhelm Stümpe. Henriette became widowed at the age of 26, with her three children to Stümpe dying as infants. About 1830 Friedrich Wilhelm Busch, the illegitimate son of a farmer, settled in Wiedensahl after completing a business apprenticeship in the nearby village of Loccum. He took over the Kleine shop in Wiedensahl, which he completely modernised.
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