derived from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular literature, the gruesome endings of which he often softened. Caning, a common aspect of nineteenth-century teaching, is prevalent in many of his works, for example Meister Druff in Adventures of a Bachelor and Lehrer Bokelmann in Plish and Plum, where it is shown as an almost sexual pleasure in applying punishment. Beatings and humiliation are found in his later work too; biographer Gudrun Schury described this as Busch's life-motif. In the estate of Busch there is the note, "Durch die Kinderjahre hindurchgeprügelt" (Beaten through the childhood years), however there is no evidence that Busch was referring to himself. He couldn't recall any beating from his father. His uncle Kleine beat him once, not with the conventional rattan stick, but symbolically with dried dahlia stalks, this for stuffing cow hairs into a village idiot's pipe. Weissweiler observes that Busch probably saw canings at his village school, where he went for three years, and quite possibly he also received this punishment. In Abenteuer eines Junggesellen Busch illustrates a form of nonviolent progressive education that fails in one scene, and caning in the following scene; the canings that ensued indicate Busch's pessimistic picture of life, which has its roots in the Protestant ethic of the nineteenth century, in which he believed that humans are inherently evil and will never master their vices. Civilisation is the aim of education, but it can only mask human instincts superficially. Gentleness only leads to a continuation of human misdeeds, therefore punishment is required, even if one retains an unrepentant character, becomes a trained puppet, or in extreme cases, dies. Antisemitism The Panic of 1873 led to growing criticism of high finance and the spread of radical Antisemitism, which in the 1880s became a broad undercurrent. These criticisms saw a separation of capital into what was construed as "raffendes" (speculative capital), and what constituted "constructive" creative production capital. The "good", "native", and "German" manufacturer was praised by Antisemitic agitators, such as Theodor Fritsch, who opposed what he saw as "'rapacious' 'greedy', 'blood-sucking', 'Jewish' financial capitalism in the form of 'plutocrats' and 'usurers'". Busch was thought to have embraced those stereotypes. Two passages are often underlined, one in Helen Who Couldn't Help It: Und der Jud mit krummer Ferse, Krummer Nas' und krummer Hos' Schlängelt sich zur hohen Börse Tiefverderbt und seelenlos. And the Hebrew, sly and craven, Round of shoulder, nose, and