Sitzender Raucher mit langer Pfeife

1851

The decision to become an artist: a dispute with his parents

A few months before graduation Busch told his parents that he wanted to study at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. According to his nephew Hermann Nöldeke, his mother supported the idea and his father eventually acquiesced.

1865

“Max and Moritz”: Richter declines, Braun buys

Busch offered Richter the manuscript of “Max and Moritz” without a fee, but Richter rejected it as sales prospects seemed poor; his former publisher Braun bought the rights for 1,000 gulden, roughly twice a craftsman's annual wage. The book tells of seven pranks by two mischievous boys who are finally ground up and fed to ducks.

1867–1872

Johanna Kessler — patron and friend

Johanna Kessler, the banker's wife, a mother of seven and an influential patron of art and music whose villa was open to artists, musicians and philosophers, believed Busch to be a great painter — although his humorous drawings did not appeal to her — and gave him an apartment and studio in her villa, later an apartment nearby. Her support and the introduction to Frankfurt's cultural life made the “Frankfurt years” his most artistically productive.

1872

“Helen Who Couldn't Help It” appears

The satire on religious hypocrisy and dubious morality was published by Otto Friedrich Bassermann, a friend Busch had met in Munich, and was soon translated into other European languages. Many details are seen as criticism of the Kesslers' way of life: Mr Schmock resembles Johanna Kessler's husband.

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.

9 January 1908

Death in Mechtshausen

In early January 1908 Busch developed a sore throat and his doctor detected a weak heart; on the night of 8–9 January he slept uneasily, taking camphor and a few drops of morphine, and died the next morning before the physician summoned by Otto Nöldeke arrived.