When the book was published in West Germany in the 1960s, another "Emil" was already well known in children's literature, the boy Emil Tischbein in Erich Kästner's "Emil und die Detektive" from the 1920s.
Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder, called the Kasseler, (3 October 1722 in Haina – 22 August 1789 in Kassel), was one of the most respected European painters in the 18th century and an important member of the Tischbein dynasty of German painters, which spanned four generations.