The 100 most important germans: Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch (born 15. April 1832 in Wiedensahl; died 9. Januar 1908 in Mechtshausen)
When you are thinking of comics, Wilhelm Busch is most likely not the very first person you think of even when you are from Germany. But the fact is, that he is one of the most important comic artist of our country, but his work is mostly called pictured stories. It is the same difference like between graphic novels and sequential art, there is no such thing.

They are all different names for the same thing. Maybe one of the reasons is, that he was recognized as an caricaturist paired with the fact, that comic is an English word and came up decades later What makes his work even more interesting is that he tells his stories in rhymes and they are not all only for children. Our Disney and Nickelodeon influenced today Point of View is just focused on the fact that drawn stories are for children in the first place.You can argue, that his most famous tale “Max und Moritz” is clearly for children, it is a bit complicated to think in that way of “Die fromme Helene” (The devotional Helene), where he deals with alcoholism and bigotry. He was even a very early example for a creator selling all of his creations without knowing their real potential, like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster did with “Superman” decades later. And last but not least, what made him so famous was his philosophy of the “Malice of the Object”, a way of thinking which is closely related to “Murphy’s Law” and still very popular in Germany.