Obituary for the cartoonist Luis Murschetz | EUROtoday

“Luis Murschetz,” wrote Kurt Kister, the then editor-in-chief of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung,” in January 2016 on the eightieth birthday of its common cartoonist, “is one of those who prove every week that the caricature depends less on what year or century you live in than on who draws it.” In reality: each week, as a result of Murschetz did the Saturday cartoon within the “Süddeutsche”, i.e. on the day with the best circulation. And even ten years after his eightieth birthday. Until he died the day earlier than yesterday.

Murschetz took up his place as a cartoonist in Munich in 1967, though he was by no means completely employed by the “Süddeutsche”. He had this in widespread with all of his outstanding colleagues within the German press, a shocking variety of whom, like him, didn’t come from Germany in any respect. Murschetz was born in Lower Styria in 1936, and the three colleagues who, along with him, represented the very best cartoon group within the nation within the service of the “South Germans” for thirty years, from 1985 to 2015, got here from Vienna (Gustav Peichl alias Ironimus), Bohemia (Dieter Hanitzsch) and Upper Styria (Josef “Pepsch” Gottscheber).

Murschetz was there the longest, and he stayed there the longest. Peichl left in 2015, Hanitzsch left the paper in 2018 after a controversial Netanyahu caricature, and Gottscheber resigned from the paper in 2022 just a few months after he additionally got here into dialogue: due to allegedly anti-Semitic parts in an outline of Zelenskiy. There had been by no means such debates about Murschetz’s drawings.

In addition to the sheer continuity of his work, his particular position within the quartet was additionally emphasised by the truth that he additionally labored as a cartoonist for an additional necessary newspaper for 4 many years, from 1971 to 2011: the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. There he succeeded Paul Flora (a South Tyrolean); After Murschetz’s time there was now not a canopy cartoonist at “Zeit”.

How the time for newspaper caricatures appears to be over. After the loss of life of Walter Hanel (a Bohemian who drew primarily for the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” but in addition for the FAZ), Murschetz was the final energetic grand grasp who entered the occupation in the course of the golden age, when cartoonists might additionally turn out to be veritable stars on the ebook market. Sempé and Tomi Ungerer had international successes with their cartoon books, and Murschetz got here near them at the least as soon as: along with his youngsters’s ebook “The Mole Grabowski,” revealed in 1972 and translated right into a dozen different languages.

Luis Murschetz was not accustomed to signal inhibition. His work totals many 1000’s of drawings. We will miss him as an illustrator for the Saturday version of the “Süddeutsche”.