Editing Wilhelm Busch (section)

===Munich===
Busch was ravaged by disease, and for five months spent time painting and collecting folk tales, legends, songs, ballads, rhymes, and fragments of regional superstitions.<ref name="Weissweiler, p. 75">Weissweiler, p. 75</ref> Busch's biographer, Joseph Kraus, saw these collections as useful additions to [[folklore]], as Busch noted the narrative background to tales and the idiosyncrasies of storytellers.<ref>Kraus, p. 32</ref> Busch tried to release the collections, but as a publisher could not be found at the time, they were issued after his death. During the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi era]] Busch was known as an "ethnic seer".<ref name="Weissweiler, p. 75"/>

[[File:Wilhelm Busch.jpg|thumb|right|Wilhelm Busch, 1860]]

After Busch had spent six months with his uncle Kleine at [[Lüthorst]], he expressed a desire to continue to study in [[Munich]]. This request caused a rift with his father who, however, eventually funded this move;<ref>Weissweiler, p. 80</ref> – see for comparison Busch's illustrated story of ''Painter Klecksel''. Busch's expectations of the Munich [[Academy of Fine Arts, Munich|Academy of Fine Arts]] were not met. His life became aimless; there were occasional return visits to Lüthorst, but contact with his parents had been broken off.<ref>Weissweiler, p. 84</ref> In 1857 and 1858, as his position seemed to be without prospects, he contemplated emigration to Brazil to keep bees.<ref>Diers, p. 31</ref>

Busch made contact with the artist association, Jung München (Young Munich), met several notable Munich artists, and wrote and provided cartoons for the Jung München newspaper.<ref>Schury, p. 72</ref> [[Kaspar Braun]], who published the satirical newspapers, ''Münchener Bilderbogen'' (Picture Sheets from Munich) and ''[[Fliegende Blätter]]'' (Flying Leaves), proposed a collaboration with Busch.<ref>Diers, p. 34</ref> This association provided Busch with sufficient funds to live. An existing self-caricature suggests that at this time he had an intense relationship with a woman from [[Ammerland]].<ref>Weissweiler, p. 95</ref> His courtship with a seventeen-year-old merchant's daughter, Anna Richter, whom Busch met through his brother Gustav, ended in 1862. Busch's biographer, Diers, suggests that her father probably refused to entrust his daughter to an almost unknown artist without regular income.<ref>Diers, p. 75</ref>

In his early Munich years Busch's attempts to write [[libretto|libretti]], which are almost forgotten today, were unsuccessful. Up to 1863 he worked on two or three major works; the third was composed by [[Georg Kremplsetzer]]. Busch's ''Liebestreu und Grausamkeit'', a romantic opera in three acts, ''[[Hansel and Gretel|Hansel und Gretel]]'', and ''Der Vetter auf Besuch'', an [[opera buffa]] of sorts, were not particularly successful. There was a dispute between Busch and Kremplsetzer during the staging of ''Der Vetter auf Besuch'', leading to the removal of Busch's name from the production; the piece was renamed, ''Singspiel von Georg Kremplsetzer''.<ref>Weissweiler, pp. 102–9</ref> However, German composer [[Elsa Laura Wolzogen]] set several of his poems to music.

In 1873 Busch returned several times to Munich, and took part in the intense life of the Munich Art Society as an escape from provincial life.<ref name="di120">Diers, p. 120</ref> In 1877, in a last attempt to be a serious artist, he took a studio in Munich.<ref name="di120" /> He left Munich abruptly in 1881, after he disrupted a variety show and subsequently made a scene through the effects of alcohol.<ref>Kraus, p. 147</ref> The 1878 nine episode illustrated tale ''Eight Sheets in the Wind'' describes how humans behave like animals when drunk. Busch's biographer Weissweiler felt the story was only superficially funny and harmless, but was a study on addiction and its induced state of delusion.<ref>Weissweiler, p. 265</ref>