WILHELM

BUSCH (1832-1908)  , German caricaturist, was born at Wiedensahl in Hanover . After studying at the academies of Dusseldorf, Antwerp and Munich, he joined in 1859 the staff of Fliegende Bldtter, the leading German comic paper, and was, together with Oberlander, the founder of modern German caricature . His humorous drawings and caricatures are remark-able for the extreme simplicity and expressiveness of his pen-andink line, which record with a few rapid scrawls the most complicated contortions of the body and the most transitory movement . His humorous illustrated poems, such as Max and Moritz, Der heilige Antonius von Padua, Die Fromme Helene, Hans Huckebein and Die Erlebnisse Knopps des Junggesellen, play, in the German nursery, the same part that Edward Lear's nonsense verses do in England . The types created by him have become household words in his country . He invented the series of comic sketches illustrating a story in scenes without words, which have inspired Caran d'Ache and other leading caricaturists .