The Nikolai Kobelkoff Phenomenon

Nikolai Kobelkoff read the paper with extreme pleasure at breakfast on the 4th of February 1931. The editor had been very forthcoming and had written a marvelous portrait of him. About him, Nikolai, who had been born without any arms and legs and who had developed into “the limbless marvel”. It was suspected that it had been a spontaneous intrauterine amputation. The amputation had happened by itself in a manner of speaking. For Nikolai this was not relevant. He had got used to being different very quickly and had made the best of it. The editor was writing a chorus of praise about him!

Nikolai was born in Wosnessensk, Russia on the 22nd of July 1851. That was nearly 80 years ago now! Nikolai was his parents’ 17th child. All previous children had been born without blemish, so to speak. Nikolai chuckled. He did not perceive his life without arms and legs as flawed. Quite on the contrary. Precisely because he seemed to be made of just a trunk, he soon became a sensation. He learned to write in an exceptional way priorly. He wrote with the stump of his arm. His cheek functioned as thumb and the stump as index finger. Nikolai even mastered calligraphy! In this way he found employment as a clerk with a notary as a young man.

But soon the colorful word of the theater and variety beckoned! In St. Petersburg he got an engagement with a theater and was presented as “The Human Trunk, the Greatest Sensation of the Century”. That was just the beginning of an incredible journey that took him all around the world. He celebrated exorbitant successes.

But in 1874 Nikolai came to Vienna. He performed at the Theater Klein in the Panoptikum, belonging to Auguste and August Schaaf, in Prater 66. Nikolai fell in love with the sister of Auguste, the 18-year-old Anna Wilfert. An exceptionally beautiful girl, whom he finally married on the 9th of Feb 1876 in Budapest after overcoming some difficulties and entering the Protestant church. She bore him eleven healthy children. By 1931, sadly only six of them were still alive.

Nikolai Kobelkoff had founded a Prater dynasty. In 1922 he bought the Prater 110 with the merry-go-round “Zum großen Chineser” (the big Chinese), the to this day famous Calafati ride. Later on, there followed a Topferlflieger (merry-go-round with revolving oversized cauldrons on chains), a velodrome, a kids’ merry-go-round and several other things. At the age of almost 80 he was the owner of the “Tobbogan”, a wooden slide over 100m long, and operated the circus ring “Parisien”. After the death of his beloved wife Anna in 1912 he had stopped traveling. Since then, he lived a secluded life in his house. His children and grandchildren gave him much joy. Without them he would not have got back on track after his tragic loss.

Hardly two years after the uplifting newspaper reading Nikolai Kobelkoff died on the 19th of Jan 1933. Many artists and leading figures attended his funeral to pay him their last respects at Vienna’s Protestant cemetery.