Max and Moritz (original: Max und Moritz - Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen) is a German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 illustrated story in verse. This highly inventive, blackly humorous

Black comedy

A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

 tale, told entirely in rhymed couplets, was written and illustrated by Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch was an influential German caricaturist, painter, and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts....

 and published in 1865. It is among the early works of Busch, nevertheless it already features many substantial, effectually aesthetic and formal regularities, procedures and basic patterns of Busch's later works. Many familiar with comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 history consider it to have been the direct inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids

Katzenjammer Kids

The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years...

. The German title satirizes the German custom of giving a subtitle to the name of dramas in the form of "Ein Drama in ... Akten" (A Drama of ... acts), which became dictums in colloquial usage for any event with an unpleasant or dramatic course, e.g. "Bundespräsidentenwahl - Drama in drei Akten" (Federal presidential Elections - Drama in Three Acts).

Cultural significance

Busch's classic tale of the terrible duo (now in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

) has since become a proud part of the culture in German-speaking countries. Even today, parents usually read these tales to their not-yet-literate children. To this day in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, and Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, a certain familiarity with the story and its rhymes is still presumed, as it is often referenced in mass communication. The two leering, cretinous faces are synonymous with mischief, and appear almost logo-like in advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 and even graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

.

It even occurs that young German couples name their boy twins Max and Moritz respectively, depending on their individual sense of humour and the intended parenting.

Max and Moritz is the first published original foreign children’s book in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 which was translated into rōmaji by Shinjirō Shibutani and Kaname Oyaizu in 1887 as ("Naughty stories").

Max and Moritz became the forerunners to the comic strip. The story inspired Rudolph Dirks

Rudolph Dirks

Rudolph Dirks was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists....

 to create The Katzenjammer Kids.

The pranks

There have been several English translations of the original German verses over the years, but all have maintained the original trochaic tetrameter

Trochaic tetrameter

Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that the poem has four trochees...

:

Preface

Ah, how oft we read or hear of

Boys we almost stand in fear of!

For example, take these stories

Of two youths, named Max and Moritz,

Who, instead of early turning

Their young minds to useful learning,

Often leered with horrid features

At their lessons and their teachers.

Look now at the empty head: he

Is for mischief always ready.

Teasing creatures - climbing fences,

Stealing apples, pears, and quinces,

Is, of course, a deal more pleasant,

And far easier for the present,

Than to sit in schools or churches,

Fixed like roosters on their perches

But O dear, O dear, O deary,

When the end comes sad and dreary!

'Tis a dreadful thing to tell

That on Max and Moritz fell!

All they did this book rehearses,

Both in pictures and in verses.

First Trick: The Widow

The boys tie several crusts of bread together with thread, and lay this trap in the chicken yard of Witwe Bolte, an old widow, causing all the chickens to become fatally entangled.

This prank is remarkably similar to the eighth history of the classic German prankster tales of Till Eulenspiegel

Till Eulenspiegel

Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore. His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France...

.

Second Trick: The Widow II

As the widow cooks her chickens, the boys sneak onto her roof. When she leaves her kitchen momentarily, the boys steal the chickens using a fishing pole down the chimney. The widow hears her dog barking and hurries upstairs, finds the hearth empty and beats the dog.

Third Trick: The Tailor

The boys torment Schneider Böck, a well-liked tailor who has a fast stream flowing in front of his house. They saw through the planks of his wooden bridge, making a precarious gap, then taunt him by making goat noises, until he runs outside. The bridge breaks; the tailor is swept away and nearly drowns (but for two geese, which he grabs a hold of and which fly high to safety).

Although Till removes the planks of the bridge instead of sawing them there are some similarities to Till Eulenspiegel (32nd History).

Fourth Trick: The Teacher

While their devout teacher, Lehrer Lämpel, is busy at church, the boys invade his home and fill his favorite pipe with gunpowder. When he lights the pipe, the blast knocks him unconscious, blackens his skin and burns away all his hair. But: "Time that comes will quick repair; yet the pipe retains its share."

Fifth Trick: The Uncle

The boys collect bags full of May bugs

Cockchafer

The cockchafer is a European beetle of the genus Melolontha, in the family Scarabaeidae....

, which they promptly deposit in their Uncle Fritz's bed. Uncle is nearly asleep when he feels the bugs walking on his nose. Horrified, he goes into a frenzy, killing them with a shoe.

Sixth Trick: The Baker

The boys invade a bakery which they believe is closed. Attempting to steal pretzels, they fall into a vat of dough. The baker returns, catches the breaded pair, and bakes them. But they survive, and escape by gnawing through their crusts.

Final Trick: The Farmer

Hiding out in the grain storage area of a farmer, Bauer Mecke, the boys slit some grain sacks. A farmhand arrives and immediately notices the problem. He puts the boys in the sack instead, then takes it to the mill. The boys are ground to bits and devoured by ducks. Later, no one expresses regret!
(The mill really exists in Ebergötzen

Ebergötzen

Ebergötzen is a village in the District of Göttingen in Germany in Lower Saxony. It is 15 km from Göttingen and belongs to the Samtgemeinde Radolfshausen...

, Germany, and can be visited)

External links

in German for a single work

• Max und Moritz
• Max & Maurice, a Juvenile History in Seven Tricks (German/English) App for iPad iPhone iPod, told with animated pictures and readout function