Rotter, second from left in second row, at a balcony of the Arshakuni House in Tiflis. Undated photo from Beyond Caricature.
Rotter, second from left in second row, at a balcony of the Arshakuni House in Tiflis. Undated photo from Beyond Caricature.
J O S E F R O T T E R | B I O G R A P H Y
An initial version of this biography was published as a Wikipedia article on October 15, 2023 under the pen name Nakaduli. The following, likewise CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL licensed for reuse, December 21, 2025 revision is the last by the same author. Debts to other Rotter Project participants are acknowledged in footnotes, alongside related references.
Josef Rotter (1867–1937) was a teacher, painter, illustrator, and editorial cartoonist of German or Austrian origin, most noted for his contribution to the Molla Nasreddin magazine.
Origins and education
Rotter has been variously described as German,1 German-born,2 ethnic German,3 and Austrian, without German necessarily referring to the German Empire, and with the term Austrian applied to Rotter in a meticulous, largely ethnographic work by Karl August Fischer.4 The village of Ober Forst near Jauernig, where Rotter was born on September 22, 1867,5 was part of the Austro-Hungarian realm until its 1918 dissolution, and then Czechoslovakia until 1938.
In 1885–6, Rotter enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, which recorded him as a native German speaker and Roman Catholic son of a stuccoist, studying painting under the supervision of Siegmund l'Allemand, August Eisenmenger, Christian Griepenkerl, and Franz Rumpler.6
Rotter is said also to have studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts,7 but his name does not appear in the institution's 1809–1935 student matriculation books.8
Tiflisian Career
In 1902 Rotter accepted an invitation to teach at the newly founded Tiflis Secondary School of Painting and Sculpture, the direct precursor of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts.9 The invitation was issued by Oskar Schmerling, a second generation Caucasian German artist and director of the school, with whom Rotter would remain in close contact for years—the two men not only teaching at the same institution, but also traveling together, and contributing to many of the same magazines.10
From 1906 to 1914 Rotter engaged in a remarkably intense and multicultural activity, creating over twenty three hundred illustrations for nine periodicals, all based in Tiflis but aiming at four linguistic groups over and beyond South Caucasia: the Armenian Hasker and Khatabala, the Azeri Molla Nasreddin, the Georgian Eshmakis Matrakhi, Nakaduli, Nishaduri, Shuamavali, Tsnobis Purtseli, and the German Kaukasische Post.11 Seven of these publications were launched in the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution,12 all took advantage of the subsequent relaxation of censorship,13 and five were satirical magazines with pioneering content.14
Over eleven hundred of Rotter’s illustrations were published in Molla Nasreddin. Each issue of this weekly magazine, whose publication experienced multiple interruptions, had a close to eight-page editorial content, including four pages devoted to social or political cartoons. About a third of these fully illustrated pages in 1906–7, half in 1908–9, three-quarters in 1910–13, nine-tenths in 1914, and three-fifths over the entire 1906–14 period, were filled with Rotter’s work.15 So Rotter’s role is seen as important in quantitative terms. Cartoons were meant to widen the audience of Molla Nasreddin, include the less educated, and cross linguistic barriers; and indeed, the magazine enjoyed a large circulation, with numerous schools and coffeehouses among its subscribers, and a geographic reach suggesting a far from exclusively Azeri readership.16 So again Rotter’s role is seen as important, but this time from a qualitative point of view and in tandem with Schmerling, the publication’s other prominent illustrator. Finally, considering Rotter's impact in synergy with all of Molla Nasreddin's collaborators, one should recall the magazine's standing as a main proponent of progressive ideas in the Muslim world, a model or reference point for the Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Iranian, and Tatar press, and a significant force in the Persian Constitutional Revolution.17
In the same period, Rotter illustrated an Azeri translation of Ferdowsi's Rostam and Sohrab,18 and some of Hovhannes Tumanyan's fairy tales and short stories.19
Viennese Career
Rotter’s collaboration with Tiflis-based periodicals came to a sudden end in the summer of 1914, shortly before the onset of World War I.20 His whereabouts during the next three to four years are unknown,21 but he is found as having resumed his artistic career shortly after the war, this time in Austria. Tens of Rotter's illustrations were published in Vienna from 1919 onward, in a series of books including James Fenimore Cooper's tale of The Red Rover, two narratives of Dietrich von Berne’s exploits, Franz Grillparzer's A Dream is Life, and a selection of Friedrich von Schiller's poems.22 Under the impulsion of Rudolf Hans Dietrich,23 Rotter was commissioned in the mid to late 1920s by Viennese clients to produce large paintings representing fictional groups of the city's past or present figures of performing arts. Commissions of this kind comprised a set of murals in Etablissement Diglas,24 another set in the Zur goldenen Glocke guest garden,25 and a commemorative aquarelle of a ball of the Society for the Promotion of Viennese Folk Arts.26 Finally, hundreds of drawings prepared by Rotter for J. Steinbrener's widely distributed almanacs27 were sent in the 1930s from Vienna to the publisher's Bohemian headquarters in Vimperk.28
The last and somewhat atypical indication of Rotter's activity, from both a chronological and geographical point of view, is a 1939 publication of some of his work in Yerevan, as an album dealing with Armenian legends.29
Rotter died on February 1, 1937 in the Barmherzige Brüder hospital of Vienna.30
Notes
1. Anar et al. (2008, 243), Guliyev and Rza (1976–84, 8:187), Javadi (2009).
2. Grant (2020, 8).
3. Slavs and Tatars (2011, 6).
5. RPJ (1890, 8–9), located by Eva Reitspiesová, and BBKW (1937, 327), discovered by Alfred Diglas, which mentions the deceased's 1904 marriage in Tiflis.
6. UAKW (2024), communicated by Joachim Diederichs.
7. Anar et al. (2008, 243), Guliyev and Rza (1976–84, 8:187).
8. Based on the digital edition's (ABKM 2015) search engine results. As observed by Jooss (2010, 10) the books "contain only partially accurate information, and in some cases, demonstrable errors." But on the other hand, sources affirming that Rotter studied at the Munich academy (Anar et al. 2008, 272; Guliyev and Rza 1976–87, 10:555) say the same of his colleague Schmerling, in contrast again with not only matriculation data but also Schmerling's autobiography and résumé in Caffee et al. (2019).
9. TSAA (2017), SovLab (n.d.).
10. Caffee et al. (2023), Slavs and Tatars (2011, 7), Sovlab (n.d.).
11. Based on Habbibayli and Karimli (2017–8) and digital collections listed in our Resources page, our counts of Rotter’s illustrations first published in Hasker, Eshmakis Matrakhi, Kaukasische Post, Khatabala, Nakaduli, Nishaduri, Molla Nasreddin, Shuamavali, and supplements to Tsnobis Furtseli are 117, 16, 3, 840, 144, 16, 1162, 18, and 22. What was counted as an illustration is a picture numbered in the original publication or a bordered picture including no other bordered one, with borders materialized by lines, margins, or ornaments whose compound expands no adjacent scene. The count for Eshmakis Matrakhi includes Rotter’s contributions to the magazine’s avatars Matrakhi, Matrakhi da salamuri, Salamuri, Chevni salamuri, Eshmaki, and Eshmakis salamuri (mentioned without specific references in WF (2022)). The count for Nakaduli conflates the illustrations published in its children’s and teenagers' editions.
12. Abashidze (1975–87, 7:452), Fischer (1944, 14), Svanidze (2018).
13. Daly (2009), Rigberg (1966).
14. Bennigsen (1962, 505, 512), Svanidze (2018).
15. Habbibayli and Karimli (2017–8). Based on this reedition, the number of Molla Nasraddin issues published in each year from 1906 to 1914 is 37, 49, 52, 52, 42, 47, 9, 27, and 25. Each issue had eight pages, with commercial content in negligible amount, except in the late 1908 to late 1909 interval, during which four additional pages were reserved for advertising.
16. Bennigsen (1962, 507, 514), Grant (2020, 5, 8–9), Slavs and Tatar (2011, 5). While reported circulation numbers range from 2,500 to 25,000, and are commonly described as impressive, comparisons are made difficult by the uncertainty surrounding the proportion of Azeris, or more generally Turkophones, in Persia.
17. Bennigsen (1962, 505, 508–512, 514).
18. Ferdowsi (1908), comprising nine illustrations by Rotter.
19. Mentioned without specific references in WF (2023).
20. Habbibayli and Karimli (2017–8) and digital collections listed in our Resources page. The last issue of Molla Nasreddin including some of Rotter's work is dated July 23, 1914 (Julian calendar).
21. Except for Fischer (1930, 12), shared by Diederichs, which says that Rotter fled Georgia because of the war.
22. Or more fully, SADU (1919), Cooper (1922), Grillparzer (1923), Kuthmayer (1923), Ricek (1923), Schiller (1923), Ricek (1924), Gaulhofer and Streicher (1932).
23. Succinct biography provided by Hilscher (2002).
24. NTW (1924, 8), shared by Diederichs.
25. Die Bühne (1925, 25–6), shared by Diederichs, which features a surprisingly full-haired photo of Rotter, in contrast to the bald Rotter in the older photo shown at the top of this page, and the caricature portrait by Schmerling in Anar et al. (2008, 242), previously published on p. 4 of the April 6, 1903 issue of a supplement to Tsnobis Furtseli. But the original version of the Die Bühne photo (Winkler 1925), located by Diederichs, shows extensive retouching of the head’s frontal and temporal regions. Furthermore, the Zur goldenen Glocke murals bear the same signature as the second illustration in Schiller (1923), depicting Persians in the very same way as in Ferdowsi (1908).
26. Winkler (1927). On the Society for the Promotion of Viennese Folk Arts, see Kornberger (2019).
27. Dalbello (2002, 69–75).
28. October and November 2025 correspondence with Eva Reitspiesová, curator of the Vimperk Castle Museum, where over five hundred pages of Rotter’s original work are preserved.
29. Rotter (1939), comprising twelve engravings.
30. BBKW (1937, 327).
References
Anar et al. 2008. Jalil Mammadguluzadeh Encyclopedia [in Azeri]. Baku: Shargh-Gharb.
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Caffee, Naomi, et al. 2019. Beyond Caricature: The Oskar Schmerling Digital Archive. Accessed July 11, 2024.
Cooper, James Fenimore. 1922. Der rote Freibeuter: Seeroman. Vienna: Nikola Verlag.
Bennigsen, Alexandre. 1962. “Mollah Nasreddin et la presse satirique musulmane de Russie avant 1917.” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 3 (3): 505–20.
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Winkler, Karl. 1925. Josef Rotter. Photograph. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Vienna.
Winkler, Karl. 1927. Ball der Gesellschaft der Förderung der Wiener Volkskunst 14. Februar 1927 im Vergnügungsetablissement Karl Gschwandner: Aquarell von Josef Rotter. Photograph. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.