3. Wilhelm Busch, author/illustrator.
Max und Moritz: Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen [Max
and Moritz: A Juvenile History in Seven Tricks]. 3. Auflage.
Munich: Braun und Schneider, 1869.
This famous poem describes the series of practical jokes the bad boys Max and Moritz play on people. (They are the ancestors of characters like Beavis and Butthead). In the poem's fifth chapter, they release an army of the beetles known as maikaifer (cockchafers or May beetles in English) into the bedroom of their uncle while he is sleeping. Of course, the poor man wakes up in a panic when he senses the horrible feeling of insects crawling all over his body.
Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) was one of the nineteenth century's pioneering comic strip artists, as well as a master of satiric comic verse. He's best, of course, in German, but his humor holds up remarkably well in English. You can read the poem in German accompanied by all Busch's illustrations with an English translation.
