Who doesn’t enjoy reading the Sunday funnies? If your like me, you also enjoy reading the daily comic strips in the papers, or more often these days, online. One of the all-time favorites from the early days of the modern newspaper comic strips was The Katzenjammer Kids, then Hans und Fritz, and later the Captain and the Kids. Featuring the pranks of twin little boys who have no respect for their elders or authority., it was written with a broken English dialog of German immigrants, and quickly became a national sensation, especially so with the large German immigrant population in the United States. Of course back then humor was very different than today and people could laugh at themselves a lot more easily and not take offence at what was an obvious bit of humor.

The Katzenjammer Kids first appeared in 1897 and was created by Rudolph Dirks after being told by the newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst to make a strip like Max und Moritz stories. How popular was it, exactly? Well, the last original strip was published on January 01, 2006.

That’s almost 109 years! – and it’s still in syndication, the older strips being recycled and still leaving us chuckling at the antics of the two little brats causing mischief that we would have all loved to dare try as youngsters ourselves. So what was Max and Moritz?

Wilhelm Busch was born in Wiedensahl, Germany in 1832, and he went to school to obtain a mechanical engineering degree. A few months before graduating, however, be abandoned this choice and started his training in art. Around 1854 he found his way into illustrating satirical stories for magazines with the rhyming verse below the artwork giving rise to the modern German Comic Strip. By 1865 he published the book “Max und Moritz a boy’s tale in 7 tricks” and it took off like a rocket. The book chronicles the adventures, detailing the seven tricks that the boys play on different people in their village, causing madcap mayhem.  It was not only popular in Germany and Austria, but throughout the German-speaking world, especially in the United States, where there was a large diaspora of Germans. It was also translated into over 30 languages and in 1887, was the first children’s book imported into Japan.

It was so popular that it was imitated by several other writers and artists in an attempt to try to coast along on the train of success that Max und Moritz had, with the most famous being The Katzenjammer Kids.

Wilhelm Busch knew of the copy-cats in American papers, but was not able to pursue any legal action as he had by that time had sold the rights off.  Wilhelm Busch passed away on January 09, 1908 after taking ill the day before. He had not only had Max und Moritz as a claim to fame, but he had also been a talented painter and poet, and created a large number of works.

In Post WWI Europe inflation was ravaging the continent. As a result there was a shortage of money, and even when you had it, you would have to get paid daily, or even twice a day in order to stave off the rapidly rising costs of goods. It sounds like a nightmare, and it was. There had been so much inflation that a new type of money called Notgeld, German for Emergency Money, was issued by local merchants, railways, municipalities, etc. just to try to get by. Denominations of money skyrocketed and still there was not enough. Over time though it did tend to stabilize, and there was a period where a type of Notgeld called Serienschein (series notes) was issued.

Serienschein notegeld was not typically intended for use and were issued for sale more as a type of cheap collectible. These notes were printed with many types of motifs, and many celebrate the many legends and history within and around the area of issuance. Made with bright colors and artwork, these series notgeld notes have a large collectible base even today, 100 years later.

Two series issues of notgeld celebrated the adventures of Max und Moritz. One was issued in Wiedensahl, Wilhelm Busch’s birthplace, and the other in the village of Gaterslaben.  The two sets are shown below with an attempt to translate them through online translation software.