Max and Moritz

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Max (left) and Moritz
More modern version as colored representation

Max and Moritz - A boy story in seven pranks is a picture story by the German humorous poet and draftsman Wilhelm Busch . It was first published at the end of October 1865 and is therefore one of Wilhelm Busch's early works. In terms of the structure of the plot, it shows noticeable regularities and basic patterns in terms of content, style and aesthetics, which are also repeated in Wilhelm Busch's later works. Many rhymes in this picture story like “But woe, woe, woe! / When I look to the end! ”,“ This was the first trick , but the second follows immediately ”and“ Thank God! Now it's over / With the wrongdoing! " Have become popular words in German usage . The story is one of the best-selling children's books and has been translated into 300 languages ​​and dialects.

Origin context

Wilhelm Busch (1860)
Kaspar Braun

Wilhelm Busch wanted to continue studying in Munich after he had not completed his art studies in Düsseldorf and Antwerp . The wish led to a falling out with his father, who finally saw him off with a final payment to Munich. However, the expectations that Wilhelm Busch had of his art studies at the Munich Academy were not fulfilled. Wilhelm Busch made contact with the Munich art scene in the artists' association Jung München , in which almost all the important Munich painters were united and for whose association newspaper Wilhelm Busch produced, among other things, caricatures and texts for use. Kaspar Braun , who published the satirical newspapers Münchener Bilderbogen and Fliegende Blätter , became aware of Busch and finally offered him a freelance work . Thanks to the fees, Wilhelm Busch was free of debt for the first time and had sufficient funds to support himself.

Between 1860 and 1863 Wilhelm Busch wrote over a hundred articles for the Munich Bilderbogen and the Fliegende Blätter . Busch found his dependence on the publisher Kaspar Braun increasingly tight, so he looked for a new publisher in Heinrich Richter, the son of the Saxon painter Ludwig Richter . Heinrich Richter's publishing house had previously only published works by Ludwig Richter, as well as children's books and religious edification literature . Wilhelm Busch may not have been aware of this fact when he agreed with Heinrich Richter to publish a picture book. Wilhelm Busch was free to choose a topic, but Heinrich Richter had reservations about his four proposed stories. Wilhelm Busch began working on Max and Moritz in November 1863 while the antics were being prepared for printing . On December 12 of the same year he had completed around 100 drawings, which he offered Heinrich Richter for publication in October 1864.

Heinrich Richter's reservations about the stories of the picture antics were justified; the book, published in 1864, proved to be a failure. It was not a book of fairy tales, picture books or caricatures, and in its cruelty it far surpassed Struwwelpeter . In November 1864 Heinrich Richter gave his author hope that the sales figures in the Christmas business would improve, but that did not happen. Heinrich Richter finally rejected the manuscript on Max and Moritz at the beginning of 1865 because of the lack of sales prospects, after his father Ludwig Richter had also come to the judgment that people who enjoyed something like this would not buy books.

Wilhelm Busch turned to his old publisher Kaspar Braun again on February 5, although he had not spoken to him or corresponded with him for some time:

“My dear Mr. Braun! [...] I am now sending you the story of Max and Moritz, which I have put nicely in color for use and personal convenience, with the request that you take the thing in your hand in a friendly manner and close it a little every now and then smile. I thought it could be used as a kind of little children's epopoe for some numbers of the Flying Papers [...]. "

Kaspar Braun promised publication in February 1865 without bringing up the dissatisfaction between the two of them, and merely asked Wilhelm Busch to revise the texts and images again. Contrary to what Wilhelm Busch had suggested, Braun did not want to publish the story in the Fliegende Blätter , but rather to expand the children's book program of the Braun & Schneider publishing house . Kaspar Braun paid Wilhelm Busch a one-off 1,000 guilders for the rights to the picture story. This corresponded to about two annual wages of a craftsman and was a proud sum for Wilhelm Busch. For Kaspar Braun and his publishing house, the business should prove to be a stroke of luck in the medium and long term. In August 1865 Wilhelm Busch drew the story on wood printing blocks in Munich , and in October 1865 the picture story came out with an edition of 4,000 copies. The sale of this first edition with a cover made of plain, light-colored cardboard dragged on until 1868. The equivalent of 125,000 euros was paid for at an auction in 1998 for a copy of this first edition .

content

4th trick: Teacher Lämpel
5th trick: Uncle Fritz
6th trick: master baker

The narrator begins the story with a moral introduction in which he introduces the names of the two rascals Max and Moritz.

Oh, what do you have to do with evil?
Hear or read to children!
For example here of these
who were called Max and Moritz;

Instead of sinister fiends, two cheeky boys look at the reader.

That instead of through wise teaching
to convert to what is good,
often laughed about it
and secretly made fun of.
Yes to evil
yes, you are ready for that!
Teasing people, torturing animals,
Steal apples, pears and plums.
That is of course more pleasant
and much more convenient,
than in church or school
to be stuck in the chair.

This foreword makes a parody-satirical reference to the general badness of children. This will now be demonstrated using examples. In five chapters the two boys play nasty tricks on the villagers, the sixth fails, in the seventh they die.

The victim of the first and second pranks is widow Bolte, who owns three chickens and a rooster. These four feathered animals perish after they have eaten a bait laid out by the boys and get caught in the apple tree with the strings attached to it. Widow Bolte, deeply saddened by the death of her chickens, fries them all in a pan. But when she fetches sauerkohl in the cellar, Max and Moritz fish the roast chickens out of the pan through the fireplace.

In the third trick they look for the tailor Böck as a victim. They saw a wooden footbridge next to his house and annoyed the tailor with vicious cries. When the tailor in hand runs across the pier to punish the villains, the pier breaks. He falls into the brook and is only saved by a pair of geese pulling him out.

They play the fourth trick on the teacher Lämpel. They penetrate during his absence to his house, and fill the Knaster -lover black powder into the pipe. The returning lamp lights the pipe as usual and suffers severe burns in the subsequent explosion.

They are just as successful in their fifth prank, in which they put Uncle Fritz Maikäfer to bed. He has to wage a nightly battle of annihilation against the actually harmless insects.

The two do not succeed in the sixth trick. Over the chimney they get into a bakery. They fall into the flour box and climb onto a chair, dusted with white, to get to the sweet pretzels. The chair breaks, and the two fall into the dough. The baker grabs the boys wrapped in dough, forms them into loaves and puts them in the oven. But the two survive, eat their way through the batter and escape.

The seventh prank ultimately leads to the death of the two. Farmer Mecke catches them cutting holes in his sacks of grain and brings them to the mill, where the miller crushes them in the mill. Then the miller's two ducks eat everything.

In the epilogue, all victims rejoice at the end of the culprits:

Widow Bolte, mild and soft,
said: "Look there, I thought so!"
"Yes, yes, yes!" Called Master Böck,
"Malice is not a purpose in life!"
On top of it, said Mr. Lämpel:
"This is another example!"
"Of course!" Says the confectioner,
"Why is man so delicious!"
Even good Uncle Fritze
said: "That comes from stupid jokes!"
But the good farmer
thought: "What is meck dat ?!"
Briefly around the whole place
went a happy hum:
"Thank God! It's over now
with the wrongdoing !! "

Features of the picture story

technology

Like all early picture stories, Max and Moritz were also prepared for printing by means of wood engraving . Wilhelm Busch did not work with zincography until the mid-1870s , which gave the picture stories, starting with Mr. and Mrs. Knopp , more of the character of free pen drawing. Wood engraving is a method of letterpress printing that was developed by the English graphic artist Thomas Bewick towards the end of the 18th century and became the most widely used reproduction technique for illustrations in the course of the 19th century . Wilhelm Busch's publisher Kaspar Braun founded the first workshop in Germany that worked with wood engraving when he was young.

Wilhelm Busch always emphasized that he first made the drawings and then wrote the verses for them. The original font by Max and Moritz has been preserved and is now part of the collection of the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover . In Busch's handwriting, most of the scenes are colored with delicate watercolors. Busch then transferred the preliminary drawing with the help of a pencil onto the primed boards of end grain or heartwood of hardwoods . The work was difficult because not only the quality of your own transmission capacity influenced the result, but also the quality of the wooden printing block. Each scene in the picture story corresponded to a labeled boxwood stick. In the case of Max and Moritz , six months elapsed between Wilhelm Busch's letter to Kaspar Braun in February 1865 and the delivery of the drawings, which were transferred to boxwood and processed in the publisher's studio. Everything that was to remain white on the later print was engraved from the plate by skilled workers with burins in the studio. The wood engraving allows a finer differentiation than the woodcut , the possible tonal values ​​almost approach that of gravure printing processes such as copper engraving . However, the implementation by the wood engraver was not always adequate for the preliminary drawing. Wilhelm Busch had individual panels reworked or made from scratch. The graphical technique of the wood engraving did not allow fine lines for all its possibilities. This is the reason why, especially in the picture stories up to the mid-1870s, the contours come to the fore in Busch's drawings, which gives Busch's figures a specific characteristic.

The wood engraving is usually only used for a black and white print. The first edition was colored with stencils by hand in so-called coloring institutes, whereby the original handwriting was still closely based on Busch. In the period that followed, however, the editions became increasingly colorful. Color printing was available from 1918 , so that later editions by Max and Moritz are sometimes very vividly colored.

construction

Like all of Wilhelm Busch's picture stories, Max and Moritz is not a drawn drama, but a sequence of individual episodes. Framed by a prologue and an epilogue , the short “life path” of the rascal couple Max and Moritz is told in seven individual pranks , which culminates in the sixth prank and ends in the last prank with the death of the two protagonists. Characteristic of the picture story is a constant contradiction of order and chaos, which results from the conflict between the two protagonists and their victims. This interplay is introduced by a detailed description of the order that Max and Moritz transform into chaos.

1st prank: introductory portrait of widow Bolte
Some people try hard
With the dear poultry;
Partly because of the eggs
Which these birds lay;
Second: Because you can now and then
Can eat a roast;
Third, you also take
Your feathers for use
In the pillows and the puddles
Because you don't like to lie cool.

Apart from the seventh prank, the victims of the other pranks are shown in similar detail. The change from order to chaos can be observed in a particularly fast sequence of scenes in the fifth stroke. Uncle Fritze goes to bed, he lies there quietly for three pictures while the cockchafer approach him. This is followed by five scenes of the annihilation of the insects, until finally the penultimate picture shows a triumphant uncle who is gently slumbering again in the last picture.

3rd trick, Master Böck is pulled out of the brook by geese

The two evildoers are usually not witness to the consequences of their pranks. It is reserved for the reader alone to witness the death of the chickens, the stomach cramps of the tailor Böck, Uncle Fritzen's night-time insect hunt or the explosion in teacher Lämpel's study. The picture story ends with the moral hint that malice is not a purpose in life! : Max and Moritz are ground in a mill and then eaten by ducks. But the reaction to the news of the deaths of the two thwarted morale ironically: What do you do meck dat! comments Bauer Mecke, who carried the two louse boys to their place of execution, in one of the two Low German lines of the text. This shows Wilhelm Busch's tendency towards stories with black humor , which runs through his entire work.

A chronological sequence of the pranks is only suggested and partly contradicting itself. Instead of May and June, the cockchafer of the fifth prank buzz in Wilhelm Busch's picture story before Easter, the time of the sixth prank.

language

The picture story is composed in four-part troches:

Max and Mor itz, the se in the
Moch th him because rum is not lei to.

An overweighting of the stressed syllables increases the comedy of the verse.

The contrast between the comedy of the drawing and an apparently serious accompanying text that is so typical of Busch's later picture stories can already be found in numerous places in Max and Moritz . The first trick, in which, thanks to Max and Moritz's zest for action, widow Bolte's four chickens ended prematurely, begins with ten sublime lines about the meaning of keeping chickens. After the death of her chickens, the maudlin lament of the widow Bolte bears no relation to the actual occasion:

1st prank: Widow Bolte
You tears flow from your eyes!
All of my hope, all of my longing
Most beautiful dream of my life
Hangs on that apple tree

And her grief ends with widow Bolte's decision

The dead, those down here
Retired so early
Quietly and in honor
Eat well fried.

In a similar way, Wilhelm Busch laments ironically and grotesquely after teacher Lämpel was temporarily unable to work as a victim of the youth's thirst for action after the explosion of his pipe:

Teacher Lämpel in a colored version of Max and Moritz
Who should teach the children now?
And increase science?
What should the teacher smoke from
When not to need the pipe?

And here, too, the conclusion is once again conciliatory:

In time everything will be healed
Only the pipe has its part.

Numerous onomatopoeia are characteristic of his work . “[Certain] things can be seen most clearly with the ears,” Wilhelm Busch explains on February 23, 1889 to his friend Franz von Lenbach . “Schnupdiwup”, Max and Moritz kidnap the roasted chickens with a fishing rod through the chimney, “Ritzeratze!” They saw “full of malice, a gap in the bridge” and “Rickeracke! Backpack! The mill is cracking ”. Occasionally, Wilhelm Busch differentiates through a slightly varied spelling or a variable number of exclamation marks. The line in the first stroke

Kikeriki! Kikikerikih !!

makes it unmistakably clear to the reader by doubling callsigns and syllables that the rooster 's second crowing is louder and more dramatic. Busch also uses word structures from pairs of ablaut with two syllables each. "Ritzeratze!" (3rd stroke), "kritze, scratch!" (5th stroke) or "crisp, knasper!" (6th stroke). They have a special melody that makes his promise just as easy to grasp as childish counting rhymes. Interjections like “Oh dear! Herrjemine! ”(1st prank) underline the dramatic climax of the individual pranks. There are also newly constructed word combinations such as “beetle crawling” and “shotgun powder bottle”, which underline the comedy of the situation. This stylistic device is also repeated in later picture stories and finds further highlights in inventions such as “legwear” in Mr. and Mrs. Knopp or “Jungfernbundesfahnenstp” in the pious Helene . The chorus-like recurring two-line lines

"This was the second trick,
But the third follows immediately. "

accentuate the progress of the plot.

Teacher lamp after the pipe explosion

Wilhelm Busch deliberately uses grammatical inaccuracies to bring his verses to life:

“Nose, hand, face and ears
Are as black as the Moors. "

It has a similar function when Wilhelm Busch suddenly inserts direct speech.

“Even good Uncle Fritze
Said: That comes from stupid jokes! "

characters

The protagonists

Single scene
Single scene
Single scene

The sentimental family novel, which was typical at the time of Max and Moritz's creation, usually paints a picture of the innocent, pure, carefree and cheerful nature of the child. This picture was in contrast to a widespread educational practice in which a discipline and whipping pedagogy predominated in schools, which was supplemented by parental penalties. A uniform, obedient and undisturbed behavior of the children was desired , and any deviation from this was severely punished. The two characters Max and Moritz stand in sharp contrast to the children's image of the contemporary family novel. Like almost all of Wilhelm Busch's children, they are aggressive and vicious. This ultimately expresses Wilhelm Busch's pessimistic image of man, which is rooted in the Protestant ethics of the 19th century , which was influenced by Augustine : Man is naturally evil, he can never master his vices. Civilization is the goal of education, but it can only superficially cover up what is instinctual in people. Meekness only leads to a continuation of his misdeeds, and punishment must be there, even if this leads to incorrigible rascals, trained puppets or, in extreme cases, to dead children.

According to many Busch biographers, Max and Moritz are the literary echoes of the friendship between Wilhelm Busch and the miller's son Erich Bachmann (1832–1907), which began in childhood and lasted until the end of Erich Bachmann's life. During the years that Wilhelm Busch lived with his parents in Wiedensahl , boyish, rough pranks, as he later ascribed to his protagonists Max and Moritz, remained rare. He later described himself in his autobiographical sketches and letters as a sensitive, fearful child who had "studied anxiety thoroughly". In the autumn of 1841, the nine-year-old Wilhelm Busch was entrusted to his maternal uncle, the 35-year-old pastor Georg Kleine, who lived in Ebergötzen . Wilhelm Busch received private lessons from his uncle, in which his new friend Erich Bachmann was also allowed to take part. Once they had learned their lessons, the two boys could run around the village unsupervised. Some of their adventures, which Wilhelm Busch reported later, have parallels to the Max and Moritz story. When the weather was fine, Wilhelm Busch and Erich Bachmann moved to the banks of the floodplain , dug hollows on the riverbank , undressed and covered themselves with the mud, in order to then gradually let themselves dry in the sun. They caught birds with limesticks and walked around the Bachmann mill, covered with white flour.

A small pencil portrait that Wilhelm Busch drew of his friend at the age of 14 shows Erich Bachmann as a chubby, self-confident boy who, like Max in this story, had a rough structure. The simultaneously generated self-portrait Busch has a cowlick that at Moritz to kessen Tolle was. A caricature drawn by Busch a year later and depicting him together with Georg Kremplsetzer shows Busch with this Moritz-Tolle. When asked about the truth of the story, Wilhelm Busch only responded cautiously:

“You ask whether Max and Moritz is a true story. Well, not really. Most of it is just thought out, but some things really went wrong, and because bad pranks don't end well, there will certainly be some truth to them. "

The victims

Master Böck
3rd trick: master tailor Böck

All of Wilhelm Busch's works show a fixation on forms of German petty-bourgeois life. His peasant figures are people devoid of any sensitivity, and his last prose sketch shows village life in unsentimental and drastic form. This can already be seen in the characters of the Max and Moritz story. Widow Bolte, Schneider Böck, teacher Lämpel, uncle Fritz, master baker, farmer Mecke and master Müller are not figures of the German upper middle class. The residents of the northern German villages where Busch spent most of his life provided templates for the design of his figures. The names Bolte and Mecke already indicate this; Bauer Mecke also speaks the only two Low German lines in the text. The surname Bolte, the surname of the first victim in the picture story, was widespread in Wilhelm Busch's birthplace Wiedensahl ; In the 1850s, a married couple Bolte lived diagonally across from Wilhelm Busch's parents' house. “Intellectuals” such as teacher Lämpel, who also functions as an organist, were more of the marginal figures of rural communities. In the case of teacher Lämpel, the long tailcoats , the stiff collar, the gaiters , the black gloves and the scholar's cap are an indication of his claim to at least outwardly differentiate himself from his village roommates. The name "lamp", which can stand for small lamp or lamp, is the satirical indication that this was probably not a great spiritual light. Even Julius Wilhelm Zincgref , the beginning of the 17th century, the teacher scolding Facetiae Pennalium that is Allerley funny school bosses published, used the name Lempel and Lämpel.

Both village teachers and teacher Lämpel were paid miserably and had additional duties such as cantor and sexton duties. The abuses that shaped the school system in the 19th century were taken up by numerous artists. Tailors like Schneider Böck were generally a popular figure in caricatures and ridicule. Many tailors were Eastern European Jews, so the ridicule and malice towards tailors and Jews often overlapped. Tailors were often considered unmanly, dishonest and impure, the reputation

Hey out! You goat bock!
Tailor, tailor, meck, meck, meck!

alluded to the widespread rumor that tailors fornicate goats. Forerunners of the tailor figure in Max and Moritz can be found in Wilhelm Busch's Sad result of a neglected upbringing and the ballad of the seven tailors . The other characters who shape the picture story of Max and Moritz also appeared in the contributions to the Fliegende Blätter and Busch's first independent publications. The two bad boys Max and Moritz have their predecessors in the little honey thieves and the story of Diogenes and the bad boys of Corinth . The cunning farmer can already be found in The Farmer and His Pig and The Farmer and the Calf . Müller and Mühle can already be found in Der Bauer und der Windmüller , the cockchafer crawling around in Uncle Fritz's bed have their forerunner in The Disturbed and Rediscovered Night's Rest or The Flea . The baker who bakes the protagonists can be found at least in the character of the ogre who appears in the picture antics story Hansel and Gretel .

The appearance of the mill in which Max and Moritz are ground is based on the Ebergötzen mill that is still in existence today . Busch met the master tailor Böck during his stay in Wörgl .

… And the moral of the story'

7th trick: Farmer Mecke
7th trick: Master Müller and Bauer Mecke

Contemporary works comparable to Wilhelm Busch's picture story Max and Moritz usually divide people into the categories of good and bad. Parents, teachers and adults as a whole belong to the class of good people, who derive their legitimacy from this to punish “bad” children and young people for their deviations.

Wilhelm Busch does not make this distinction. Busch's children are almost all without exception malicious and aggressive. In Max and Moritz their malice is detached from any motive and is the result of a pure urge to act. In the first prank, the two protagonists ask themselves about the idea of ​​the widow Bolte and her four chickens:

What is to be done here now?

Their unfounded wrongdoing becomes even clearer in the third trick, which is directed against Master Böck, the tailor:

Master Böck does everything,
Because that is his purpose in life.
So got in the church
Everyone likes him to be friends

The parents, their educators or other adults with whom the children in Wilhelm Busch's picture stories deal, however, are no less vicious and aggressive. Teacher Lämpel may play the organ in the church "well and honestly", but at the end of the story he still acknowledges the execution of Max and Moritz with satisfaction. The “good” Uncle Fritz does not seem to regard the treatment of the children as different from his trampling on the cockchafer, which has robbed him of the quiet at night. The end of the two protagonists does not affect the “good” farmer at all: “What does meck dat do?” He comments after the two children have been ground into duck food. Gert Ueding therefore judges the picture stories of Wilhelm Busch that their naughty children bring to light the "whole bravery and honesty of their opponents as a hypocritical facade". From his point of view, Max and Moritz are the provocateurs who bring out the taboo, suppressed instincts and volitional impulses of their parents and educators. For Ueding, the annihilation of the two children symbolizes the authoritarian act with which they must fight down their temptation to do the same thing as the child. Wilhelm Busch condemns the hypocrisy of the German petty bourgeoisie in raising children in a particularly comical episode in Tobias Knopp , where a father beats his two sons as a preventive measure (!) Before attending a village festival .

Max and Moritz as anticipation of comics and animated films

Prank 1: Widow Bolte's chickens
The chickens: scene from the Ulenspiegel , 1515
... and the implementation at Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch is often classified as the forerunner of modern comics because of his virtuoso combination of image and word . From the second half of the 20th century, his work therefore increasingly earned him the honorable nickname of the grandfather of comics or the forefather of comics . The story The Virtuoso , published in 1865, and the pictures for the Jobsiade (1872) are usually used as evidence for this statement . In The Virtuoso there are scenes that are a simultaneous presentation of several phases of movement; In the pictures for the Jobsiade , individual scenes are movement studies that are reminiscent of the phase photographs by Eadweard Muybridge and, according to the opinion of Busch biographer Eva Weissweiler, are a pioneering artistic achievement by Busch in their smooth transition from drawing to cinematography.

Busch's Max and Moritz are usually not assigned this classification. The Busch biographer Joseph Kraus names Max and Moritz Busch's journeyman piece with verses which, on the whole, are poorly and properly rhymed accompanying texts for the pictures. Daniel Ruby also judges in his analysis of the illustrated story work Wilhelm Busch that the structural and stylistic elements characteristic of Busch are rather rudimentary. However, this early picture story already shows an increasing concentration on the main characters and is sometimes very sparing in the interior drawing. The punch line develops from a dramaturgical understanding of the entire story. Figures such as Widow Bolte or Teacher Lämpel are introduced with half-length portraits in which any movement is banned from the picture. They have an exaggerated physiognomy that allows the reader to classify these figures. Similarly, the chickens are abstracted into pear-shaped figures when they are introduced in Streich 1. As in later picture stories, Busch conveyed the impression of movement and action, partly by changing perspectives, in Max and Moritz . The plot is broken down into individual situations like in a film. The chicken catch in the first stroke is modeled on one of the illustrations in an early New High German folk book on Till Eulenspiegel , which appeared at the beginning of the 16th century. In comparison to this model, however, Busch clearly reduces his image, showing sparingly - and concentrating on the characteristic - only Moritz's pointed shoes and Max's clumsy shoes, as well as the bait laid out for the chickens. Busch spends only seven pictures before the chicken quartet in the apple tree finds its death. First the rooster calls his three hens, then they eat the bait intended for them, try to run apart in two pictures, then fly up, land in the apple tree and hang themselves there on a branch. This level of detail could be dispensed with for the plot, but Busch uses this sequence of scenes to steer towards a pun.

Prank 1
Each one lays an egg quickly
And then death comes

The three hens actually lay one last egg. The rooster, on the other hand, lays its egg in the form of a small, oval piece of chicken droppings.

The fourth trick, in which teacher Lämpel plays a role, has elements that play a role in today's cinematic formal language. The black gloves that Teacher Lämpel wears appear in several frames so that they are familiar to the reader. First they slide off the bench while teacher Lämpel plays the organ, then he carries them when the church door is locked and on the way home. Finally his meerschaum pipe , filled with gun powder by Max and Moritz, explodes , a scene that could also appear in today's comic.

explosion
Rum !! - That's when the whistle goes off
With a din, terribly big
Coffee pot and water glass
Tobacco box, inkwell,
Oven, table and morning seat -
Everything flies in a powder lightning bolt.

The teacher Lämpel, who was badly damaged by the explosion, has black hands again - this time, however, they are black due to the skin burns caused by the explosion.

The picture story of Max and Moritz was also the inspiration for one of the oldest comic strips that is still going on today. The Katzenjammer Kids Native Holsteiners Rudolph Dirks , which, from 1897, every Saturday in a supplement of the New York Journal published, created at the suggestion of publisher William Randolph Hearst with the explicit desire a brother and sister to invent that the basic pattern of Max and Moritz follows.

Interpretative approaches

Widow Bolte's house as a simultaneous stage . According to Edith Braun's interpretation, an allusion to the "German House" .

Wilhelm Busch has always emphasized that he wrote the picture story “for use and for one's own convenience” . The majority of literary scholars who deal with the work of Wilhelm Busch therefore do not attach any deeper meaning to the history of pictures and limit their analyzes to the structure, language, image implementation and characterization of the people. Edith Braun is an exception , who takes the view that Wilhelm Busch depicted some events from the time of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848/49 in his picture story. For her evidence she refers to the handwriting, since in the process of going to print some of the important notes and clues were changed. After analyzing the handwriting, some capital letters are written twice, the same letters are executed differently, words are written between the lines, and different forms of double strokes are used. Edith Braun is therefore of the opinion that the handwriting that circulated for some time among Busch's Munich painter friends is ambiguous. She interprets the cockchafer that plagues Uncle Fritz as a reference to Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer , one of the initiators of the Hambach Festival , who was occasionally ridiculed as the Great Emperor of May Freedom and Great Cockchafer of the one undivided Germany . In the chickens she sees an allusion to Heinrich von Gagern , the President of the Frankfurt National Assembly . The Rawau! Rawau! In her opinion, des Spitzes in the 2nd trick alludes to Franz Raveaux , who was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, whereby she emphasizes that Spitz was the term used to refer to the official informers of the time. For them, Max represents the bourgeois parties, as indicated by his clothing. Moritz, who is dressed poorly, is the representative of the young democratic and thus revolutionary parties. From the funeral words of the widow Bolte, Edith Braun reads an allusion to Ferdinand Freiligrath , who with his poem Die Todten an die Leben set a literary memorial to those who fell in March . In single scene 21, which shows the widow Bolte's house like a simultaneous stage , she sees a reference to the situation of the “German House” . Max, who has a broad, reddish bald head in the handwriting, is, in her opinion, an allusion to Karl Marx , while Angel refers to Friedrich Engels in her interpretation . Tricks three to five caricature, according to Braun's analysis, Johann von Austria , who had been elected German imperial administrator by the Frankfurt National Assembly , the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm and his successor Wilhelm I. Edith Braun believes she recognizes Johann Philipp Becker in Meister Bäcker , one of the most radical speaker at the Hambach Festival. Bauer Mecke, on the other hand, sees Edith Braun as a self-caricature of Busch, who comments on the events of the National Assembly with the words Wat meck dat an ?!

Reception and translations

Max-und-Moritz-Plastik in front of the town hall in Seesen
Max and Moritz in Moselle Franconian
Max and Moritz in Mechtshausen point in different directions (Wilhelm Busch's death house and grave)

The sale of Max and Moritz was slow at first. It was not until the second edition in 1868 that sales figures improved, and in 1908, the year of Busch's death, there were 56 editions and more than 430,000 copies sold. The work initially went unnoticed by the critics. It was only after 1870 that the educators of the Bismarckian era criticized it as a frivolous work that was harmful to young people. At the time, a Julius Ducoc judged that Max and Moritz were dubious readings for young people :

"In six cases the lovely boys always get away with it, although their pranks are of the very worst kind [...] The seventh entails a jokingly exaggerated punishment [...] But that's just incidentally. The verses could be changed, and I would always find the whole thing equally wrong and reprehensible, because in the […] excellent illustrations […] everything worthy of attention already appears to be ridiculed by the distorted drawing. The widow, the uncle, the teacher, the tailor etc. appear [...] through the grotesque appearance of the caricature as pathetic scarecrows , which in every way provoke ridicule [...] It is not that children find such a representation very much to their taste to be doubted [...] But that just proves [...] that the danger is also doubled here because the still fluctuating normal moral relationship to the respectable gives the child only [...] protection that can easily be shaken. "

- Julius Ducoc

Wilhelm Busch seems to have at least partially shared this attitude. In a letter to Kaspar Braun, Fanny von Pannewitz, who Wilhelm Busch met at a reception of her grandparents in 1876, describes how Wilhelm Busch had explained to society that Max and Moritz were not a children's book, but had a pernicious effect on children who were not brought up with caricatures must. The Styrian school authorities forbade the sale of Max and Moritz to young people under the age of eighteen in 1929 .

A reception about the appropriateness of the depicted death penalty took place late. Hilmar Klute wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2015:

“And none of the honorable citizens, not the widow, not the teacher, not the tailor and certainly not the baker and the miller - nobody speaks a word of regret about the death of the two children Max and Moritz. Uncle Fritze, whose bed they threw bugs, says in all seriousness: That comes from stupid jokes. Really? Is the death penalty for kid jokes? A happy hum, it is said, goes around the village. Humanity is evil, harsh and unforgiving. That is the message of the Germans' humorous heart. "

- Hilmar Klute

Even before Struwwelpeter, Max und Moritz is one of the best-known works of German children's literature and was already successful when it was first published in 1865. The work was translated into ten languages ​​during Wilhelm Busch's lifetime, including Japanese in 1887. In 1997 there were at least 281 translations into dialects and languages, including over 60 into German-speaking dialects, including such remote languages ​​as South Jutian ; there are also translations into Latin and ancient Greek.

The linguist Manfred Görlach played an outstanding role in the publication, collection and cataloging of translations into foreign languages ​​and dialects . In addition, there are countless parodies and imitations , dramatizations, paraphrases and settings. More recently, Robert Gernhardt's parody Das Assentat or A Streich von Pat and Doris or A Wilhelm Busch Paraphrase , which describes the so-called “ breast assassination ” on the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno on April 22, 1969, has become known.

The Max and Moritz Prize has been awarded at the Erlangen Comic Salon since 1984 .

Adaptations

Commemorative stamp from the German Federal Post Office on the 50th anniversary of Wilhelm Busch's death in 1958
Title page of the first edition from 1865

The film production company Vera-Filmwerke created the animated film Max and Moritz in 1923 . Curt Wolfram Kießlich directed.

The German composer Richard Mohaupt (music and libretto) created the dance burlesque Max und Moritz together with the Italian choreographer Alfredo Bortoluzzi for the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe , where the work was premiered on December 18, 1949.

The composer Norbert Schultze wrote a ballet based on Max and Moritz, which premiered in 1938 at the Hamburg Opera. This became the template for the music film Max and Moritz , shot in 1956 , which Schultze himself directed.

In 1958, on the 50th anniversary of Wilhelm Busch's death, a special stamp from the 1958 postage stamp was issued by the Deutsche Bundespost .

The Bremen church musician and composer Günther Kretzschmar created the approx. 40-minute school cantata Max and Moritz for one to three-part children's choir and seven instruments in 1963 , which is widely used in school music circles.

A musical implementation by Gisbert Näther was composed in the 1990s for the Potsdam Children's Music Theater and premiered by the Babelsberg German Film Orchestra , of which Näther is a horn player. After a follow-up production of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden as a ballet, the composition was performed by numerous stages in Germany. In 1996 Näther received the “ Wilhelm Busch Prize ” (gold medal) for the composition. A CD recording conducted by Scott Lawton with Katja Riemann as speaker won the 2005 Leopold Media Prize of the Association of German Music Schools.

There is another musical arrangement by Jan Koetsier for trombone quartet. This was recorded on CD in 1994 by the Slokar Quartet with Horst Schwarzer as speaker.

In 2008, the Heidelberg composer Martin Bärenz set Max and Moritz's pranks to music for speakers and large orchestra. The speaker for the premiere was the Frankfurt actor and cabaret artist Michael Quast . There is also an extended version of this setting with a children's choir.

On the 100th anniversary of Wilhelm Busch's death in 2008, the Berlin Theater Thikwa developed a stage version designed and directed by Günther Grosser (premiere: January 19, 2008 in Theater F40 ).

The Austrian composer and music school director Albin Zaininger created a version for a 12-piece instrumental ensemble and speaker in 2008. This composition can also be implemented by musically advanced students in music schools. It premiered on May 7th, 2008 in Freistadt / Upper Austria.

There is also an intonation of the opera and concert singer Eberhard Kummer , which was released in 1990 by Extempore Records (Linz) on a music cassette.

A cartoon adaptation by Max and Moritz appeared on television in 1978, in which Heinz Rühmann took on the role of the narrator and told in cutscenes from the life of Wilhelm Busch. A puppet animation film with the same theme was made by the Diehl brothers ( Spuk mit Max and Moritz , 1951). Another animated series about Max and Moritz was produced in 1999. For the Heinz-Rühmann adaptation, the Heimo company in Mölln also produced toy and collectible figures made of hard rubber .

The German-American composer Samuel Adler wrote Max and Moritz for speaking role and orchestra (1997). The work was premiered on June 4, 2000 in Bochum . It consists of a prologue and seven pranks. The composition is published by Advance Music.

In 2005, Max and Moritz Reloaded, a film adaptation that is freely based on Busch's picture story and relocates it to the German present, came to the cinemas.

From May 2019 on, Max and Moritz can be seen in the Berliner Ensemble in the staging of Antu Romero Nunes .

Expenses (selection)

  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz, a boy story in 7 pranks. A boy’s story in seven pranks. 1st edition. Braun and Schneider, Munich 1865 ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • HKA: Wilhelm Busch: The picture stories. Historical-critical edition. Edited by Hans Ries with the collaboration of Ingrid Haberland, edited by Herwig Guratzsch and Hans Joachim Neyer on behalf of the Wilhelm Busch Society. Volume I. Hannover 2002, Text Sp. 328–385, Notes Sp. 1277–1381, ISBN 3-87706-650-X .
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz, a boy story in 7 pranks. 67th edition. Braun and Schneider, Munich 1917.
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz, a boy story in 7 pranks. Unchanged edition. Schwager & Steinlein, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-89600-918-0 .
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz. A boy’s story in seven pranks. Anniversary edition In: Esslinger Reprint. Esslinger Verlag JF Schreiber, Esslingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-480-22364-0 .
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz polyglot. dtv 10026, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-423-10026-5 (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin).
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz - in Latin , translated by Franz Schlosser, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-15-008843-7
  • Wilhelm Busch; Manfred Görlach (Ed.): Metamorphoses: new dialect translations of Max and Moritz. Winter, Heidelberg 1998, ISBN 3-8253-0549-X .
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max and Moritz, a boy story in 7 strokes, completely revised and illustrated edition especially for digital reading devices. 2nd Edition. Null Papier Verlag, Neuss 2011, ISBN 978-3-943466-20-1 .
  • Wilhelm Busch: Max & Moritz - A boy’s story in seven pranks, newly set to music and illustrated 150 years anniversary special edition (audio book / audio CD including reading and picture book, mp3 download and eBook download) medienagentur.at 2015, ISBN 978- 3-9504001-1-3 .

literature

  • Edith Braun: Secret Matter Max and Moritz. Wilhelm Busch's best trick. Gollenstein, Blieskastel 2005, ISBN 3-935731-84-1 .
  • Manfred Görlach: Max and Moritz on everyone's lips: Changes in a children's book; an exhibition in the University and City Library Cologne, June 27 - 30 September 1997 (= Small Writings of the University and City Library Cologne. Volume 3.) University and City Library, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-931596-10-9 .
  • Jörg Michael Günther: The Max & Moritz case. Legal opinion on the activities of two juvenile offenders to warn parents and educators. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-8218-1858-1 .
  • Michaela Diers: Wilhelm Busch, life and work. dtv, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-34452-4 .
  • Joseph Kraus: Wilhelm Busch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970, ISBN 3-499-50163-5 .
  • Ulrich Mihr: Wilhelm Busch: The Protestant who laughs anyway. Narr, Tübingen 1983, ISBN 3-87808-920-1 (also: Tübingen, University, dissertation, 1982).
  • Frank Pietzcker: Symbol and reality in the work of Wilhelm Busch - The hidden statements of his picture stories (= European university publications. Volume 1832). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-631-39313-X .
  • Daniel Ruby: Scheme and Variation - Investigations on Wilhelm Busch's picture story work (= European university writings. Volume 1638). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-631-49725-3 .
  • Gudrun Schury: I wish I were an Eskimo. The life of Wilhelm Busch. Biography. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-02653-0 .
  • Gert Ueding : Wilhelm Busch. The 19th century en miniature (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. Volume 1246). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-518-37746-9 .
  • Eva Weissweiler : Wilhelm Busch. The laughing pessimist. A biography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03930-6 .
  • Berndt W. Wessling : Wilhelm Busch - philosopher with a pointed pen. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-06344-9 .

Movie

Web links

Commons : Max and Moritz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Max and Moritz  - Quotes
Wikisource: Max and Moritz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HKA: Wilhelm Busch: The picture stories. Historical-critical edition . Edited by Hans Ries with the collaboration of Ingrid Haberland, edited by Herwig Guratzsch and Hans Joachim Neyer on behalf of the Wilhelm Busch Society. Volume I. Hanover 2002, p. 1337 ff. The often found but incorrect statement April 4, 1865 is likely to go back to a faulty Wikipedia entry; see. Gudrun Schury: Years of Max and Moritz - Wrong anniversary . faustkultur.de; accessed on February 24, 2016.
  2. ^ Ruby, p. 11.
  3. ↑ cf. Summary of the documentary Max and Moritz. The incredible story of a children's book . ARD / arte , April 5, 2015.
  4. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 80.
  5. ↑ Schury, p. 72.
  6. ↑ Diers, p. 34.
  7. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 118.
  8. ↑ Schury, pp. 97 and 98; Braun, p. 225.
  9. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 120.
  10. ↑ Schury, p. 98.
  11. ↑ a b c Weissweiler, p. 121.
  12. ↑ Braun, p. 225.
  13. ↑ a b Schury, p. 99.
  14. ↑ Diers, p. 45 and p. 46.
  15. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 127.
  16. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 254.
  17. ↑ Diers, p. 47.
  18. ↑ Schury, p. 89 and p. 90.
  19. ↑ Schury, p. 91.
  20. ↑ Diers, p. 41 and p. 42.
  21. ↑ Diers, p. 48.
  22. ↑ Pietzcker, p. 26.
  23. ↑ a b Kraus, p. 47.
  24. ↑ Kraus, p. 48.
  25. ↑ Quoted from Ruby, p. 80.
  26. ^ Ruby, p. 84.
  27. ↑ Ruby, pp. 84 and 85.
  28. ^ Ruby, p. 86.
  29. ↑ Ueding, p. 60.
  30. ↑ Ueding, p. 61.
  31. ↑ Ueding, p. 60 and p. 61.
  32. ^ Ruby, p. 27.
  33. ↑ Mihr, pp. 27 to 40 and pp. 61–70.
  34. ↑ Pietzcker, p. 67.
  35. ↑ Schury, p. 29 and p. 30.
  36. ↑ See, for example, Weissweiler, p. 33 and Schury, p. 107.
  37. ^ Wilhelm Busch to Grete Meyer, letter of January 24, 1900, quoted in Weissweiler, p. 20.
  38. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 34.
  39. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 33 and p. 34.
  40. ↑ Quoted from Schury, p. 107.
  41. ↑ Ueding, p. 296 and p. 297.
  42. ↑ Ueding, p. 301 and p. 302.
  43. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 128.
  44. ↑ Schury, p. 106.
  45. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 130 and p. 131.
  46. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 130.
  47. ^ NN : Schneider Böck: 3rd strike by Max and Moritz comes from Tyrol . In: Austria (newspaper) / oe24.at , January 11, 2008.
  48. ↑ Ueding, p. 79 and p. 80.
  49. ↑ a b c Ueding, p. 81.
  50. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 142 and p. 143.
  51. ↑ Schury, p. 81.
  52. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 204 and p. 205.
  53. ^ Ruby, p. 12.
  54. ↑ Schury, p. 80.
  55. ↑ Ueding, p. 193. Ueding incorrectly describes the graphic technique used by Wilhelm Busch as woodcut .
  56. ↑ Schury, p. 103.
  57. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 331.
  58. ^ For example, in the letter to Kaspar Braun in February 1865 and in 1886 in a letter to his friend Wilhelm von Kaulbach , quoted in Braun, p. 228 f.
  59. ↑ Braun, p. 59.
  60. ↑ Braun, p. 69.
  61. ↑ Braun, p. 68.
  62. ↑ Braun, p. 62.
  63. ↑ Braun, p. 64.
  64. ↑ Braun, p. 65.
  65. ↑ Braun, p. 84.
  66. ↑ Braun, p. 132.
  67. ↑ Braun, p. 143, p. 163 and p. 181.
  68. ↑ Braun, p. 200.
  69. ↑ Braun, p. 216.
  70. ↑ Diers, p. 63.
  71. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 132 and p. 133.
  72. ↑ Quoted from Weissweiler, p. 133.
  73. ↑ Diers, p. 49.
  74. ↑ Wessling, p. 76.
  75. ↑ Hilmar Klute: But woe . In: Süddeutsche.de , July 31, 2015.
  76. ↑ Diers, p. 64.
  77. ↑ Heinz Wegehaupt: Everyone is talking about Max and Moritz. Changes in a children's book; an exhibition in the University and City Library of Cologne . In: BSZ / Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund , accessed on August 21, 2015.
  78. ↑ Robert Gernhardt : The assassination or a prank by Pat and Doris or a Wilhelm Busch paraphrase. In: In luck and elsewhere. Poems. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, pp. 210-214.
  79. ↑ Orchestra. ( Memento from July 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Official Site of Samuel Adler .
  80. ↑ berliner-ensemble.de
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 29, 2015 .