03.09.2025
Kupferstichkabinett
For eighty years, Wilhelm Busch’s drawing Die drei Räuber was thought to be lost. After it resurfaced on the Swiss art market, the drawing’s former owner has now made it a gift to the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
In spring 2025, a private collection from Winterthur was delivered to Zurich’s Auktionshaus Koller for auction. Franz-Carl Diegelmann, head of the departments for Old Master Prints and Drawings, learned through his research that the drawing Die drei Räuber (The Three Robbers), an illustration accompanying Wilhelm Busch’s poem Die kühne Müllerstochter (The Miller’s Cunning Daughter), once belonged to the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett’s collection and had been lost in the chaos of the Second World War. The auction house contacted the museum, which confirmed that the drawing was lost during the war. Following talks with the auction house, the drawing’s owner decided to give the work to the Kupferstichkabinett.
Die drei Räuber is an illustration of the poem Die kühne Müllerstochter by Wilhelm Busch, first published in 1868 in volume 20 of the magazine Über Land und Meer. It is the second page in a total of eleven episodes detailing a gruesome event. The accompanying text reads:
Three robbers are sneaking, wild and still / Hush, hush, whist, whist! – around the mill.
The miller’s daughter notices the nocturnal intruders, and as it turns out, she knows a thing or two about how to defend herself. The text accompanying the last drawing summarises:
And so the three died quite unexpectedly. / Oh, young boy, look at that!!! / A single girl can often be / The misfortune of three grown men!!!!
In 1909, the Kupferstichkabinett had purchased several drawings, among them Die drei Räuber, directly from the artist’s heirs for a Busch exhibition at the Verein der Berliner Künstler. In 1945, the drawing was moved to the “I. Reichsbanktiefkeller” (the first Reichsbank vault), along with other artworks. It has been considered lost since then, but is now part of the museum’s collection once again.
The return of this artwork to the Kupferstichkabinett fills us with great joy. In true Wilhelm Busch fashion, the page featuring the onomatopoeic rhyme and the conspicuously inconspicuous robbers sneaking around the house still brings a smile to our faces and makes us think. We are grateful to the generous interim owner and the thorough experts at the auction house, whose attentive work and sense of responsibility made this return possible.
Dagmar Korbacher, director of the Kupferstichkabinett
In his broadside ballad, Wilhelm Busch tells the tale of a surprising reversal. Sometimes things turn out quite differently than we expect them to. The ambushed miller’s daughter is no damsel in distress – instead, the robbers end up dead. And by way of fortunate circumstances and private generosity, an artwork that was thought lost in the war finds its way back to the museum and into a public collection.
Anna Pfäfflin, curator for 19th-century art at the Kupferstichkabinett