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Magicians in Action 1980-2015
Christian Scherer
www.magact.com
INTRODUCTION
During
35 years, I have visited many national and international magic conventions,
lectures, workshops and public performances and have taken photos of magicians
from around the world. This never happened with the intention to publish the
pictures, but simply to have some souvenirs of the events.
One day, shortly before my retirement, I made the effort to look through the
photos and was surprised how many there were. Actually, it would be a shame if
they would simply disappear into oblivion. So, the idea arose to publish some of
the photos accompanied by personal comments by the depicted magicians. The
quality of the pictures varies greatly. Since the majority of the pictures were
taken without flash out of consideration for the artists, they are far from
perfect. Nevertheless, they have a certain charm.
There was no criterion or restriction for the selection of the artists. The
photos which show magicians at different times of their magical careers are on
one hand of historical interest, on the other hand, they show many artists who
were not in the international headlines, yet through their performances
contributed to the promotion of the image of magic as an art.
In 2015 I set out to create crude PDFs of the photos and to contact more than
300 magicians worldwide asking them for a text about their activities in magic.
It was a tremendous work. After having secured email addresses from artists in
28 countries I wrote some 350 requests, a myriad of reminders over a period of
one and a half year, and some 300 thank-you mails. All in all, some 2000 mails
were sent back and forth. In some cases, I had to write as many as a dozen
reminders over a period of almost a year and was put off time and again until I
finally received the required text. In the meantime – after having upgraded my
hardware and software – I scanned and edited all the photos, most of them from
negative films, sometimes I only had a paper copy of a photo.
Despite my efforts and pleas, including attempts to make contact via Facebook, I
wasn't able to convince everyone to participate. In some instances,
communication difficulties or language barriers may have been the reason, but in
most cases the interest of the persons in question simply was limited. So, I
have to face the fact that great pictures of some fifty famous magicians –
including several FISM winners – couldn't be included. But nonetheless, I am
very grateful for the cooperation of so many people and for all the
contributions I received from all over the world. Without them, the books
couldn’t have been realized.
To pay homage to some 30 departed magicians I also included photos and short
biographies of them.
Thanks to all who supported me in finding e-mail addresses and establishing
contacts. Special thanks go to Roberto Giobbi, Rafael Benatar, Lorenz Schär and
Hans-Christian Solka. The latter also provided the translations of a number of
Russian texts. A big thank you to Marcel Bühler and his wife Yuko for the
translation of my request to Japanese.
Thanks are also due to Oleg Stepanov for his help to establish contact with
Russian magicians, and to Andrey Fedorov for his generous help to forward and
explain my request to several Russian magicians and to get the approval for the
publication of some texts.
Thanks to the folks who translated the texts to English (Jennifer Lachs, German
to English; Frederic Fovet, French to English; Nicholas Zinzi, Italian to
English).
Steve Beam did a marvelous job proofreading the complete text. The fact that the
texts were written by many authors from different nations, whose first language
is not English, didn't make it any easier. Thanks a lot, Steve!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born in 1948 in Köniz, a suburb of Bern (Switzerland), the third child of
an independent businessman (owner of a toy shop). I attended primary school in
Köniz, progymnasium, gymnasium and high school in Bern, where I attained a
degree in psychology.
From 1977 through 2013 I worked at the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention. As
I held this job on a part-time basis occupying only 70 percent of my time, I had
the opportunity to read and practice in my spare time the art of magic, of which
I was intrigued since the age of 10. After I had received a magic set from my
godfather, I wanted all publicly-available German magic books as birthday and
Christmas presents in the following years. When I attended a magic show at the
Kursaal in Bern in 1967, in the program I discovered the address of a magic
dealer (L' Académie Suisse de Magie, Ch.-E. Sauty). A fantastic new world full
of inexplicable miracles opened up to me. A year later, after the visit of the
"Grand Festival International de la Magie" at the Kursaal in Bern (where, among
others, Siegfried and Roy were performing!), I discovered the address of Alfred
Kellerhof (a German magic dealer) from whom I bought Hugard and Braue’s Modern
Magic Manual and began to study manipulative magic. In 1969 I visited the "Nacht
der tausend Wunder" (Night of 1000 Wonders) in Bern, organized by Werner
Hornung. I gave my first performance outside of the family circle at the
graduation ceremony for classmates and teachers. The first "real" performance
followed with 21 years on the occasion of a wedding feast.
By reading magazines and intensive study of literature I continued my
development in magic. End of the seventies I met Almeico (Albert Meier), who had
opened a magic shop in Bern. In the following years, I regularly spent Saturday
afternoons in Almeico's Magic Studio. At 29, I attended my first magic
convention in Montreux (Switzerland). In the late seventies, I twice attended
Ron MacMillan's international one-day convention in London, where I met, among
others, Juan Tamariz and Aurelio Paviato. In the following years, I attended
dozens of conventions in Europe, including eighteen (out of twenty) conventions
of The Magic Hands (Manfred Thumm) in Böblingen and Sindelfingen.
In 1978 I published my first book on card magic. In the same year, I became a
member of the IBM, in 1979 a member of the Magic Promotion Club, founded in Bern
at the initiative of Mickey Delf. During twenty years (1980 to 2000), I held the
office of president.
In 1980 I participated for the first time in a contest in card magic in Bonn
(Germany). As a complete stranger to the scene, I won the first prize. With the
publication of a video tape produced by Sepp Holzer and Heinz Lurz from Munich –
at a time when there were hardly any German-language video tapes on the market –
I became known as a card magician in the German speaking countries. From 1980, I
went to conventions, gave lectures and had several appearances on Swiss TV.
Beside card magic I always had a penchant for tricks that were based on
dexterity. As a part-time professional I performed magic at a professional level
for professional fees, but magic was never my main income.
As the only entrant, I was Swiss Champion of Card Magic on three consecutive
championships of the Magischer Ring der Schweiz, MRS (Magic Ring of Switzerland)
in 1990, 1993 and 1996.
In over 35 years, I have self-published a dozen booklets and books in German,
translated Erdnase's The Expert at the Card Table to German, and released
several videos.
In addition, I put together a new questionnaire for the entrance examination in
the MRS and wrote a booklet Introduction to the Basics of Magic, which
has been handed out to candidates to prepare for the entrance examination since
2000.
From 1995 to 1999, I was the editor of Hocus Pocus, the club magazine of
the MRS. In 2000 I was made an honorary member of the MRS and Honorary President
of the Magic Promotion Club.
For more information visit www.magact.com
© March 2017