Abracadabra! German executives turn to magic to up their game

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PULLACH IM ISARTAL, Germany, Jan 20, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Harold Voit takes
out his wallet, extracts a wad of 50-euro bills and gazes at it calmly as the
cash goes up in flames.

Slamming the billfold shut, Voit puts out the fire and opens it again to
reveal the money intact and ready for spending. A room full of wide-eyed
magic students erupts into applause.

Most of these apprentices of the dark arts are not budding cabaret or
YouTube stars, however, but business executives and other professionals
hoping to put a few new tricks up their sleeves.

“Learning magic isn’t just about picking up a couple of gags — it’s about
developing your own personality, your own way of presenting, speaking and
moving,” said Voit, 70, founder of the Magic Academy in Pullach, a wealthy
Munich suburb.

Voit, who has worked for more than half his life as a professional
magician and instructor, said that was part of why so many busy career people
sought out his courses.

“Most of my students don’t quit their day jobs. I’ve had everyone from
young interns to an 80-year-old priest from a monastery,” said Voit, who has
a neatly trimmed beard and a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye.

“You’d be amazed how many situations there are in which magic can help,”
he said, offering examples ranging from flirting to closing a business deal.

– Harry Potter mania –

Germany’s fascination with sorcery goes back centuries but saw a strong
revival in the post-war years, when a weary population sought entertainment
and escapism in popular nightclub acts.

The current boom has two decades of Harry Potter mania to thank, as well
as a growing recognition that a bit of wizardry can go a long way in real
life.

The country’s biggest magic stars, the Ehrlich Brothers, fill football
stadiums.

German illusionist Marc Weide, 27, won best parlour magic performer at
July’s world championship in Busan, South Korea with a card trick — beating
a rival who could make 10 doves and four sheep vanish and reappear. Second
place went to another German, Axel Hecklau.

Voit, who abandoned a career with the foreign intelligence service to take
up a magic wand, said his night school offered Germany’s first state-
recognised certificates for illusionists.

But most pupils who commit to two years of weekly classes for a 750-euro
($860) fee came to him seeking something more elusive than a rabbit to pull
out of a hat. The course motto is “Conjure yourself into the spotlight”.

One of the pupils present on a recent night in the classroom was
entrepreneur Marco Hafenrichter, 46, who runs a successful construction
business.

As he practised a classic trick involving the seamless coupling and
uncoupling of ropes, he said that learning how to trigger a sense of wonder
in an audience had attracted him to magic school.

“I was looking for some balance in my life,” he said.

“At the moment my biggest fan is still my son but by the end of the
course, I’d like to have six or seven routines down that I can always
perform.”

IT industry manager Marianne Hofmann, 67, said magic had given her a touch
of star power and not just with her eight grandchildren.

“I head up a choir and everything I learn about human psychology here I
can use there, especially how you command the attention of an audience,” she
said.

Hofmann said that in sometimes staid German corporate culture there seemed
to be a real hunger for fantasy.

“Maybe we’re just a bit too rational otherwise and are longing to have a
few dreams.”

Thomas Fraps, 51, holds a doctorate in physics but caught the magic bug
during his studies.

Fraps, who has written extensively on illusions and stagecraft, has
performed monthly for nearly 25 years in what he calls Germany’s longest
running magic act.

He noted that cherished writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — who penned
the poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” later popularised by Walt Disney — gave
each of his grandchildren a box of tricks in the 18th century.

Then, illusions were seen as a tool to advance Enlightenment thinking
because magic, once understood, could serve as a mirror on perception and its
fallibility — the stuff that makes us human.

A century earlier, books detailing how illusions could be performed were
credited with helping to stop witch burning, Fraps said.

“The irony is that as more people learned about magic, it helped demystify
things that they saw and couldn’t understand,” he said.

“Now for company bosses or physicists, it’s great to plunge into another
world. When you have a trick, you don’t have to take the stage ‘naked’,
unlike a standup comedian who’s only got his jokes.”

Voit said online instructional videos, which count hundreds of thousands
of fans, have only stoked interest in magic schools like his.

“There’s no replacement for learning it live,” said Voit.

Just as technological innovations like self-driving cars make the
impossible commonplace, Voit said the best magic tricks were, like Harry
Potter books, simply based on a great story.

“With a trick, you come up with the best fairy tale you can,” he said.

“Magic is the joy that comes from the special delight in being fooled.”