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The artist as fire-eater: Willibald Wolf Rudinoff

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After my last post about the resourceful Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who took his carefully-prepared etching plates with him on a canoeing trip, I thought I should follow up with the the wonderfully-named Willibald Wolf Rudinoff, a circus performer and nightclub singer who carted his self--designed etching press with him across the world. Rudinoff (sometimes listed as Willi, Willy, or Wilhelm Rudinoff and also under the surname Morgenstern, or Morgenstern-Rudinoff) was born in Angerm�nde, Germany on 4 August 1866. Rudinoff came from an Eastern European Jewish family (either Polish or Russian, the sources differ, but from somewhere in the Pale of Settlement); his father was a cantor, who was fleeing persecution. Rudinoff's education was spread across Russia, Germany, and France, and as an adult he cultivated a "citizen of the world" mentality. Willibald Wolf Rudinoff also worked as Willy Morgenstern. Apparently his passport was in the name Morgenstern, and this seems to have