Gerhard Haderer (born 1951, Leonding, Austria) is an Austrian cartoonist and caricaturist.
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Gerhard Haderer was born in 1951 in Leonding, in upper Austria. He studied at a technical art school in Linz for four years from 1965, and then studied engraving in Stockholm. He returned to Austria in 1971 and worked as an independent commercial artist and draughtsman. He developed his photo-realistic style working on advertising, illustrations, and even designing maps for the Salzburg tourist board. In 1985, after a cancer operation, he abandoned his commercial career to become a freelance caricaturist and satirical illustrator. His first satirical works appeared in the upper-Austrian magazines "Watzmann", "ORF-Ventil" and "Oberösterreichische Nachrichten". He soon began to appear regularly in the Austrian weekly “Profil" to which he still contributes. His work then began to appear in newspapers and magazines in other German speaking countries. Since 1991 his work has appeared regularly in Germany’s "Stern" magazine as “Haderers Wochenschau” ("Haderers weekly news"). From 1997 to 2000, and from 2008 he published his own monthly satirical comics magazine called "Moff". He has produced designs for several satirical puppet shows. He married his wife Margit in 1974. He has lived and worked in Linz since 1985.
Honours
His book Das Leben des Jesus (The Life of Jesus), a satire in which Jesus is portrayed as an incense-addicted hippy, caused international controversy. When it was published in 2002 it was violently attacked in Austria. The Catholic Church in Austria including the Archbishop of Vienna denounced the work as blasphemous. The Bishop of Salzburg demanded a jail term for the caricaturist for violating the blasphemy paragraph in the Austrian penal code, and Catholic schools in Austria boycotted the publishing house. When it was published in Greece in 2005, it was banned for blasphemy, Haderer faced extradition and a suspended six-month jail sentence in absentia. When the ban and sentence were reversed on appeal, Haderer celebrated the ruling with a Greek salad and two shots of ouzo.
In 2006 Haderer called the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's cartoons of Mohammed "a stupidity". He said Islamic tradition opposes any pictorial depiction of the Prophet. "Given that I am not Muslim, and that I cannot comprehend the fervor associated with that religion, I have to accept its taboos".