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We all thought they are dead already!
17,5" x 27,6"
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 ilhelm Busch 1832 - 1908 was a most beloved German caricaturist, painter and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts.
One of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz, A Story of Seven Boyish Pranks (published in 1865), was an immediate success and has achieved the status of a popular classic and perennial bestseller.
Many couplets from Busch's humorous verses have achieved the status of adages in the German language, such as "Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr" ("It is easy to become a father, but being one is rather harder") or
"Dieses war der erste Streich, doch der zweite folgt sogleich" ("This was the initial trick, but the second follows quick").
Only Goethe and Schiller are quoted more frequently in German than Busch.
At the end of the sixth trick it says:
Now you think they've paid the debt!
No, my friend, they're living yet.
In Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz story they did seven tricks and the last one was deadly for themselves.
We were all up to mischief when we were young and those who survived remember these days fondly or reluctantly.
Max and Moritz would have had a fair chance to become regular members of the society, if they would have stopped playing dirty tricks on other people at least after the sixth trick.
With the seventh final trick the boys were pushed into the mill by the farmer and were ground to bits and devoured by ducks.
I tried to imagine what would they look like, if they would have made it and would have become old rascals.
So I did a little ryhme by myself in the measure of Wilhelm Busch's verses.
"We all thought they are dead already!
But they're alive and breathing steady!
Their sixth trick was the final one
'cause otherwise they would be done."
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