Editing Wilhelm Busch (section)

===Canings and other cruelties===
[[File:Busch Werke v3 p 326.jpg|thumb|right|240px|Two scenes from ''Fips the Monkey'']]
It is not unusual to see thrashing, tormenting, and [[caning]] in Busch's works. Sharp pencils pierced through models, housewives fall onto kitchen knives, thieves are spiked by umbrellas, tailors cut their tormentors with scissors, rascals are ground in [[Gristmill|corn mills]], drunkards burn, and cats, dogs, and monkeys defecate while being tormented. Frequently Busch has been called a [[Sadistic personality disorder|sadist]] by educators and psychologists.<ref>Weissweiler, p. 94</ref> Tails that are burnt, pulled off, trapped, stretched, or eaten is seen by Weissweiler as not aggression against animals, but a [[Phallus|phallic]] allusion to Busch's undeveloped sexual life.<ref name="Weissweiler, p. 194"/> Such graphic text and imagery in cartoon form was not unusual at the time, and publishers, the public, or censors found it not particularly noteworthy.<ref name="Weissweiler, p. 51"/> Topics and motifs for his early work were derived from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular literature, the gruesome endings of which he often softened.<ref>Pietzcker, pp. 15–16</ref>

Caning, a common aspect of nineteenth-century teaching, is prevalent in many of his works, for example Meister Druff in ''Adventures of a Bachelor'' and Lehrer Bokelmann in ''Plish and Plum'', where it is shown as an almost sexual pleasure in applying punishment.<ref>Mihr, pp. 76–79</ref> Beatings and humiliation are found in his later work too; biographer Gudrun Schury described this as Busch's life-motif.<ref>Schury, p. 27</ref> <!--In the 1904 poetry collection ''Zu guter Letzt'' there is written:
:''Es saust der Stock, es schwirrt die Rute.
:''Du darfst nicht zeigen, was du bist
:''Wie schad, o Mensch, daß dir das Gute
:''Im Grunde so zuwider ist.
-->

In the estate of Busch there is the note, "Durch die Kinderjahre hindurchgeprügelt" (Beaten through the childhood years),<ref>Mihr, p. 71</ref> however there is no evidence that Busch was referring to himself.<ref>Schury, p. 23</ref> He couldn't recall any beating from his father. His uncle Kleine beat him once, not with the conventional [[rattan]] stick, but symbolically with dried [[dahlia]] stalks, this for stuffing cow hairs into a village idiot's pipe.<ref>Kraus, p. 15</ref> Weissweiler observes that Busch probably saw canings at his village school, where he went for three years, and quite possibly he also received this punishment.<ref>Weissweiler, p. 22</ref> In ''Abenteuer eines Junggesellen'' Busch illustrates a form of nonviolent progressive education that fails in one scene, and caning in the following scene; the canings that ensued indicate Busch's pessimistic picture of life, which has its roots in the [[Augustine of Hippo|Protestant]] ethic of the nineteenth century,<ref>Mihr, pp. 27–40, 61–70</ref> in which he believed that humans are inherently evil and will never master their vices. Civilisation is the aim of education, but it can only mask human instincts superficially.<ref>Pietzcker, p. 67</ref> Gentleness only leads to a continuation of human misdeeds, therefore punishment is required, even if one retains an unrepentant character, becomes a trained puppet, or in extreme cases, dies.<ref>Schury, pp. 29–30</ref>