Nikolai Wassiljewittsch Kobelkoff was born in Wossnesensk, Siberia, Russia, July 22, 1851, the fourteenth child of two normal parents, with all normal brothers and sisters. His parents, ashamed of their deformed child, hid him from view, the local villagers so frightened by the young oddity that they would cross themselves and look away when Nikolai and his mother passed. Despite the superstitions that surrounded the limbless boy's birth, he obtained an education from a kind schoolmaster, who taught him to write by holding a pen between his chin and his arm stump. Kobelkoff would later take up painting, his primary pursuit, clutching his brush in a similar fashion. At eighteen, Kobelkoff took a job as a bookkeeper with the family mining business.
In 1871, a showman named Berg heard about the limbless young man and offered to exhibit him in a theater in St. Petersburg. For the next two years, he starred here, delighting audiences with mundane tasks such as threading a needle, loading a pistol, snuffing a candle and of course, drawing and painting. He could "climb" stairs, hop on and off a chair, and even perform daring escape acts, once escaping from a lion's cage before being devoured.
Kobelkoff became an international sensation, eventually touring every European country and ingratiating himself to the royals and nobles. While exhibiting in Austria in 1875, he met Anna Wilfert, a Viennese woman - some say they were introduced by Albert I, King of Saxony. Their public wedding took place in Budapest the same year, with Anna carrying Kobelkoff down the aisle in her arms. He carried her wedding ring in a pouch around his neck and slipped it on her finger with his teeth. Anna soon became pregnant and had the couple's first child in June of 1876. Ten more would follow, of whom six would survive to maturity.
As beloved as Nikolai was by people all over Europe and America (which he toured in 1882), it's been said that he had a dark side and was abusive toward Anna, hitting her with his arm stump and shouting obsecenities at her. He was also rumored to have a drinking problem. Nevertheless, she seems to have been quite devoted to him and stayed by his side until he died.
Nikolai expanded his horizons to include film, assembling his own film crew in 1898. He apparently used the film medium to document his act, as the short film Kobelkoff shows a typical scene from one of his performances. With the money he'd accumulated over the years, Kobelkoff was even able to buy his own amusement park at Prater, Austria's Coney Island. As recently as the 1970s, Kobelkoff's descendants still ran an arcade there.
Kobelkoff died in January 1933, in his home in Austria, a wealthy and accomplished man. So widespread was his fame that for decades to come, limbless perfomers could be assured of success by billing themselves as "the next Kobelkoff".