grgr (34): max & moritz (757f.)

[Otto Sell]

Max und Moritz

Intro
"Ach was muss man oft von boesen
Kindern hoeren oder lesen!!
Wie zum Beispiel hier von diesen,
welche Max und Moritz hiessen;
Die, anstatt durch weise Lehren
Sich zum Guten zu bekehren,
Oftmals noch darueber lachten
Und sich heimlich lustig machten. -
- Ja, zur Uebeltaetigkeit,
Ja, dazu ist man bereit! -
- Menschen necken, Tiere quaelen,
Aepfel, Birnen, Zwetschen stehlen --
Das ist freilich angenehmer
Und dazu auch viel bequemer,
Als in Kirche oder Schule
Festzusitzen auf dem Stuhle. -
- Aber wehe, wehe, wehe!
Wenn ich auf das Ende sehe!! -
- Ach das war ein schlimmes Ding,
Wie es Max und Moritz ging.
- Drum ist hier, was sie getrieben,
Abgemalt und aufgeschrieben.

A sad case of "Juvenile Deliquency" -
Full html-version including sounds and pictures at
http://gutenberg.aol.de/gutenb.htm or directly:
http://gutenberg.aol.de/wbusch/maxmor/vorwort.htm

My favourite of W. Busch has always been the one on the Prussian-French War
from 1870-71, very anti-French, full of prejudices and indeed narrow
humor, - eh, this you'll find *not* on the Gutenberg-site.

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus <lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2000 2:45 PM
Subject: grgr (34): max & moritz (757f.)




 ... on "a wilhelm busch cartoon face" (501) weisenburger (p. 223) writes in
his
companion: "german artist wilhelm busch (1832-1908) was the country's best
known
and most beloved humorist. m a x  a n d  m o r i t z, his illustrated
children's
book, appeared in 1865. these were also the names playfully assigned to two
experimental a2 rockets fired from borkum in 1934 (klee and merk, 12). in
addition, blicero has two members of his firing crew named max and moritz"
...
still very popular in germany ... a grandmother of my wife gave last x-mas a
wilhelm bush cartoon collection to our lil' daughter ... & about 2 weeks ago
i
had a take-away chicken &, while eating it, realized that there was on the
bag a
wilhelm busch reminescence showing moritz & max fishing for roasted birds in
the
chimney of the widow bolte ... nevertheless, though i was impressed by "max
&
moritz"' brutal end as a child, i never really liked wilhelm busch ... first
thing that made me distrustful were that  a l l  the grown ups recommended
it in
a kind of brain-washed manner ... "cultural heritage" or something ...
actually
the humor of busch is quite narrow and, what has been pointed out by german
post-war writers like heinrich böll or uwe johnson who hated busch truly, in
parts anti-semitic ... just (- & nothing else but:) schadenfreude ...
busch, so i read more than once, seems, nevertheless, to have been important
to
the development of cartoon as art (- "katzenjammer kids" etc pp) ... these
days
there is a renewed interest in his work ... the comical draftsman and writer
robert gernhard (- "paulus schrieb an die apatschen/ihr sollt nicht in der
kirche klatschen") has just published a new study on busch and came, in case
i
understood a recent tv-report correctly, to a somehow ambivalent conclusion
...

 kfl