Die Blendung Simsons

January – October 1875

Correspondence with Marie Anderson and a meeting in Mainz

From January to October 1875 Busch exchanged more than fifty letters on philosophy, religion and ethics with the Dutch writer Marie Anderson, one of the few who enjoyed his “Kritik des Herzens”. They met in Mainz in October, after which he returned to Bassermann in Heidelberg in a “horrible mood”; there is no evidence of a close relationship with any woman after her.

1875–1877

The Tobias Knopp trilogy

“Adventures of a Bachelor” (1875), “Mr. and Mrs. Knopp” (1876) and “Julie” (1877): without pathos Busch makes his hero aware of his mortality, and in the first part the bachelor, after visiting married friends, proposes to his housekeeper. According to the biographer Wessling, Busch became sceptical of marriage after writing it: he told Marie Anderson that he would never marry, being in good hands with his sister.

1877

A last attempt to be a serious artist: a studio in Munich

In 1877, in a last attempt to be a serious artist, Busch took a studio in Munich.

1879

Lives with the family of his widowed sister Fanny

After the death in 1879 of Pastor Hermann Nöldeke, the husband of his sister Fanny, Busch lived with her family, renovated the house in Wiedensahl and became a “father” to his three young nephews. Fanny kept house even though Busch was a rich man, and would have preferred a more urban place for her sons' education.

c. 1880