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Doctor Heinrich Hoffmann, the author of Struwwelpeter, relates its origin as follows:
Towards Christmas in the year 1844, when my eldest son was three years old, I went to town with the intention to buy as a present for him a picture-book, which should be adapted to the little fellow's powers of comprehension. But what did I find? Long tales, stupid collections of pictures, moralizing stories, beginning and ending with admonitions like: "the good child must be truthful", or: "children must keep clean", etc. But I lost all patience when I found a folio volume, where a bench, a chair, a jug, and many other things were drawn, and under each picture neatly written: "half, a third, or a tenth of the natural size". A child, for whose amusement you are painting a bench, will think that a real bench; he has not and need not have an idea of the full size of a real bench. The child does not reason abstractedly, and the old tale of the bridge (vide: Gellert's celebrated German fable "the farmer and his son") will certainly impress him more that hundreds of general warnings like: "you must not tell stories".
That evening I nevertheless brought home a book, and handing it over to my wife, said: "there is what you wished for the little one". She took it, calling out rather amazed: "well that is a note-book with blank leaves". - "Just so, but we are going to make a book out of it". And it happened thus: I was then, although the medical man of the lunatic asylum, obliged to practise in town, where I was often brought into contact with children. Now, it certainly is a difficult thing for a Doctor to make little ones from 3 to 6 years old feel at their ease with him, because when they are in good health, the medical man and the chimney-sweep are very often made bugbears of. "My dear, if you are naughty the chimney-sweep will carry you off", or: "child, if you eat too much the Doctor will come with his nasty medecine". The consequence is, that the little angel, when ill, begins to cry violently and to struggle as soon as the physician enters the room. An examination becomes utterly impossible, and the medical man cannot stay for hours vainly endeavouring to soothe the little patient. On such occasions a slip of paper and a pencil, and humourously related, will calm the little antagonist, dry his tears and allow the medical man to do his duty.
In this manner most of the following absurd scenes originated. Some of them were later inventions, sketched in the same impulsive manner, without the least intention on my part of literary fame. The book was bound, put under the Christmas-tree, and the effect on the boy was just what I expected; not so, that produced upon some of my grown up friends who caught sight of the manuscript. From all sides I was asked to have it printed and published. I refused as first, as I had not the most distant idea of appearing before the public as author of juvenile story and picture-books. But meeting one evening at a friend's house one of my present publishers, I was forced into it almost against my will, and thus the little home-bird flew into the wide, wide world, beginning, I may well say its voyage round the world.
Shock-headed Peter, in his 31st birthday, celebrated his hundredth edition.