Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (14 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was a German humorist, poet, illustrator, and painter. He published wildly innovative illustrated tales that remain influential to this day. Busch drew on the tropes of folk humour as well as a profound knowledge of German literature and art to satirize contemporary life, any kind of piety, Catholicism, Philistinism, religious morality, bigotry, and moral uplift. His mastery of drawing and verse became deeply influential for future generations of comic artists and vernacular poets. Among many notable influences, The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Busch's Max and Moritz. Today, the Wilhelm Busch Prize and the Wilhelm Busch Museum help maintain his legacy. The 175th anniversary of his birth in 2007 was celebrated throughout Germany. Busch remains one of the most influential poets and artists in Western Europe. Family background Johann Georg Kleine, Wilhelm Busch's maternal grandfather, settled in the small village of Wiedensahl, where in 1817 he bought a thatched half-timbered house where Wilhelm Busch was to be born 15 years later. Amalie Kleine, Johann's wife and Wilhelm Busch's grandmother, kept a shop where 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. He married Henriette Kleine Stümpe. Life Childhood Wilhelm Busch was born on 14 April 1832, the first of seven children to Henriette Kleine Stümpe and Friedrich Wilhelm Busch. His six siblings followed shortly after: Fanny (1834), Gustav (1836), Adolf (1838), Otto (1841), Anna (1843), and Hermann (1845); all survived childhood. His parents were ambitious, hard-working and devout Protestants who later, despite becoming relatively prosperous, could not afford to educate all three sons. Busch's biographer Berndt W. Wessling suggested that Friedrich Wilhelm Busch invested heavily in the education of his sons partly because his own illegitimacy held significant stigma in rural areas. The young Wilhelm Busch was a tall child, with a delicate physique. The coarse boyishness of his later protagonists, "Max and Moritz"