MAGIC CHRISTIAN – HOFZINSER NON PLUS ULTRA vol 1

Volume I: His Life, His Card Magic

J. N. Hofzinser is one of the most significant magicians to have thrived in the nineteenth century, and has been a role model for great magicians ever since. He is the inventor of some of the best and most enduring card tricks ever created. Yet information on his life and magic has been scant and filled with errors.

Hofzinser was a resident and well-known figure in nineteenth-century Vienna. More than twenty years ago, another highly respected and honored Viennese professional magician, Magic Christian, took on the task of enlarging and correcting the record we have of his predecessor. After doing extensive research over decades, and studying thousands of original sources, Magic Christian has managed to totally revise what we know about J. N. Hofzinser. The result is an exhaustive study of this master and his extraordinarily creative magic.

Given the abundant resources Magic Christian has uncovered, he is able to present a picture of Hofzinser that puts flesh on the shadow of the only previous portrait we have, which was created by Ottokar Fischer over one hundred years ago. In Christian’s first volume, through numerous recently discovered documents, we get to know Hofzinser as a determined individualist, a published poet and composer, a respected music critic, an insightful analyst of his contemporaries in magic, and an inspired magician.

Through systematic research in public and private archives, Christian found new material on Hofzinser and his life’s journey. He has also examined and evaluated existing material and has reproduced it for the first time in its authentic form. All this creates an essential work, one that imparts an authentic picture of Viennese conjuring in the nineteenth century, told through the life and magic of J. N. Hofzinser.