The English Struwwelpeter, or Slovenly Peter, originated in 1844 when Frankfurt psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann created a homemade picture book as a Christmas present for his three‑year‑old son, dissatisfied with the overly pious children’s books then available in German bookshops. (Perplexity)
Published anonymously in 1845 under a longer humorous title and the pseudonym “Reimerich Kinderlieb,” it quickly became a bestseller; by the third edition the work had taken the shorter name Der Struwwelpeter from its iconic first tale about a wild‑haired, unkempt boy.lib.usm+3
Comprising ten rhymed cautionary stories with bold sequential illustrations, the book showed children suffering grotesquely exaggerated consequences for misbehavior, a didactic approach that reflected mid‑19th‑century bourgeois and Victorian ideas about discipline. Its success spurred rapid translation, and within a few years an English version, The English Struwwelpeter, or Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures for Little Children, established the cycle in the Anglophone world as a staple of moralistic nursery literature. Later English adaptations, including Mark Twain’s much‑delayed Slovenly Peter, as well as parodies and pastiches, cemented Hoffmann’s creation as both a classic of children’s literature and a lasting influence on comics, dark humor, and debates about childhood and pedagogy.wikipedia+5