 Busch was ravaged by disease , and for five months spent time painting and collecting folk tales , legends , songs , ballads , rhymes and fragments of regional <unk> . Busch 's biographer Joseph Kraus saw these collections as useful additions to folklore , as Busch noted the narrative background to tales and the idiosyncrasies of <unk> . Busch tried to release the collections , but as a publisher could not be found at the time they were issued after his death . During the Nazi era Busch was known as an " ethnic seer " . 
