Carl Rotter

Carl Rotter (born October 22, 1895 in Seitenberg, Habelschwerdt district (today Stronie Śląskie ), † September 6, 1968 in Lübeck ) was a German glass cutter . The factory Rotter Glas founded by him in Lübeck still exists today.

Sticker with the Rotter logo

Life

Carl Rotter was the son of a Silesian glass cutter. He learned the trade of glass cutter in his father's company and became a draftsman in an industrial glassworks . Since his apprenticeship he had developed a ball drilling process that made it possible to grind balls very deep into the glass and for which he received a Reich patent in 1929 .

At the same time he studied violin with the conductor Franz Hasler in Bad Landeck and painting and drawing with his son Bernhard Hasler .

He was married to Margarete, b. Feverish. In 1932 the son Wolfgang was born. From 1938 he was a partner in a glass industry in Hermsdorf am Kynast .

Performing military service from 1944, he was a British prisoner of war on the island of Fehmarn at the end of the war in 1945 . He came to a refugee camp in Lübeck-Eichholz, where his family, who had fled from Silesia, found him again through the tracing service of the German Red Cross .

The family found their first accommodation with Hermann Fey , who helped Rotter to get a violin again. Since then, Rotter has played in various Lübeck chamber music ensembles and in Erwin Zillinger's church orchestra . In the 1950s, the family moved into an apartment in the town house of the patroness Lilli Dieckmann, who lives in Groß Sarau ( Coliseum (Lübeck) ) near Roeckstrasse , and later a house on Schenkendorfstrasse.

1948 succeeded in building a new workshop for glass cut in the port 16, which initially pressed glass from the glassworks of Richard Süßmuth processed. In 1949 the first spherical cups were manufactured using the process patented by Rotter, which became the company's trademark. They were first exhibited at the Christmas fair in 1949 in the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry .

This led to contact and collaboration with Alfred Mahlau . A vase with an engraved view of Lübeck as well as the vases of fish , jellyfish and horsetail were created based on designs by Mahlaus . Glasses and vases with engraved Lübeck motifs became another main product of the grinding shop.

Rotter was a member of the Society for the Promotion of Charitable Activities and the Overbeck Society , the Schleswig-Holstein Crafts Association and the Hamburg Arts and Crafts Association.

In 1966, the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and Alen Müller-Hellwig awarded him the Senate Plaque of Honor.

Manufactory

In 1964, Rotter acquired a plot of land at Elisenstrasse 2, on which a new building for the manufacture was built by November 1965 and where it is still located today. After Carl Rotter's death, his son Wolfgang ran the company; today it is run by his daughter-in-law Birgit Rotter. The main product is the Rotter glasses made of flashed glass , which are supplied in 4 sizes, 10 colors and with a large number of decorative engravings. Rotter Glas belongs to the Deutsche Manufakturen - Handmade-in-Germany initiative .

literature

• Wulf Schadendorf : Museum Behnhaus . The house and its rooms. Painting, sculpture, handicrafts (= Lübeck museum catalogs 3). 2nd expanded and changed edition. Museum for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City, Lübeck 1976, p. 169 (short curriculum vitae)
• Rolf Saltzwedel : Music and glass - glass like music. The life of the glass cutter Carl Rotter. In: Der Wagen 1976, pp. 97-108

Web links

• Manufactories website
• Right down to the final touch: Transparency and color: The Carl Rotter manufactory turns glasses into small works of art , Die Welt from September 12, 2004, accessed on May 30, 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Products ( Memento of the original from May 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 30, 2016