Wilhelm Busch is, with Goethe, Thomas Mann or Schiller, one of the best known and beloved authors of German literature. Busch, the eldest of seven brothers, was born in Wiedensahl in 1832 to a family of merchants. In 1852 he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
After falling ill with typhus, in 1853, he returned home, and upon recovering from the disease began collecting sagas, stories, and folk songs to illustrate them. The following year he moved to Munich, and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1859 he began to collaborate with the satirical newspaper Fliegende Blätter and with the Münchner Bilderbogen. That would be where, in 1865, he would publish his best-known work, Max and Moritz, which became an immediate success that has managed to reach the category of popular classic and perennial best seller. Busch suffered several nicotine poisonings during his life, but did not die until 1908 of heart failure. He is considered by modern critics as the "Grandfather of Comics".