180th birthday of Wilhelm Busch Wilhelm Busch (15 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was an influential German caricaturist, painter, and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts.[...]
Max and Moritz as well as many of his other picture stories are regarded as one of the main precursors of the modern comic strip. [...] Busch has become posthumously known in German by the honorary epithet of Großvater der Comics ("Grandfather of Comics").[...]
Many couplets from Busch's humorous verses have achieved the status of adages in the German language, such as "Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr" ("It's easy to become a father, but being one is harder rather") or "Dieses war der erste Streich, doch der zweite folgt sogleich" ("This was the first initial trick, but then the second follows quick"). Only Goethe and Schiller are quoted more frequently in German than Busch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Busch