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Why do Hans and Fritz have a bear?
Zoological Resourcefulness of Harold Knerr’s Katzenjammer Kids
I don’t think it’s a pet. I believe that the many appearances of bears in the strip are different bears. BEARS. Troublemaker kids with some supernatural ability to harken bears to their aid?
In the Harold Knerr era of this long-running comic strip, a pair of brothers, Hans and Fritz, who … may be fraternal twins? (Because they’re near-identical in size but look different) They get into trouble every day, pulling pranks they could only pull off in comics. Adults in the strip pursue them and sometimes beat them in the final panel. Sometimes, they hide from their pursuers, laughing.
For modern readers, there’s admittedly not much here to entertain you. Non-white characters are drawn and written as the most grotesque racist caricatures. The dialogue from Hans and Fritz and their family members is written in tedious dialect, especially when the letterer was feeling stylish — like when ‘A’s look ‘D’s, etc.
But, we do get to see a lot of different wild animals pulled into their misadventures, which can be fun:
