Struwwelpeter (1845) by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman poked fun at the dreary moral stories of its time and children loved it. (Read the original book here). The ironic subtitle is ‘Pretty Stories and  Funny Pictures’ – these are gleefully gruesome rhymes; cautionary tales about disobedience and its consequences, with suitably shocking pictures. It’s not surprising to learn that Hoffman founded an influential Frankfurt asylum which partly inspired the rhymes.

The most iconic and graphic tale is in The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb:

Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go

It sounds better in the original ‘klipp und klapp’ of the German. (Listen here). And here’s a creepy movie version. The Scissormen also appear in The Doom Patrol comics as beings that can cut people out of reality.

Less well known but just as stunning is the wartime parody Struwwelhitler by Robert and Philip Spence in aid of the War Relief Fund (‘supplying games and woollen comforts to our Fighting Services’). Written in 1941, it’s a sharp satire of the Nazi regime with poems about Hitler and his henchmen who already had plenty of blood on their hands:

See! the horrid blood drops drip

From each dirty finger tip;

Pie-crust never could be brittler

Than the word of Adolf Hitler.

The thumb-sucker is replaced by propaganda minister Goebbels. His ‘poison pen’ is snipped by the ‘Father of all lies’:

 

Finally, look at Bob Staake’s cool modern interpretation of Shock-headed Peter.