Hardy (magician)

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The magician Hardy

Hardy , actually Erhard Smutny (born January 12, 1949 in Aichach ), is a German magician and author . Hardy was Germany's best known child magician in 2003.

Life

Hardy also had a twin brother named Manfred. Both boys suffered from a serious speech impediment from an early age, which made life very difficult for them at first in school. Numerous medical treatments against stuttering were hardly successful.

Hardy learned magic as an autodidact at the age of ten ; At the age of 10, Hardy found the joy of magic through a magic box that he received for Christmas. Over time, he found that he lost his stuttering when performing magic tricks while speaking little rhymes. For the stuttering boy, this was the main desire to become a magician. He was suddenly able to speak fluently.

Hardy attended the primary school in Buchloe up to the 6th grade and then entered the 3-year business school Max Frenzel in Kaufbeuren / Allgäu and graduated with secondary school leaving certificate. He then began an apprenticeship as a publishing company at Krafthand Verlag Bad Wörishofen, which he had to break off for health reasons.

He then began training as a professional magician with the well-known magic teacher and FISM President Henk Vermeyden in Amsterdam and took acting lessons. He has been active as a magician since the 1960s.

Hardy specialized in magic for children, because Erhard discovered his talent for dealing with children through a chance performance in his own former kindergarten in Buchloe.

With a teacher in the 1970s, he developed some magic tricks that are particularly suitable for children in the demonstration. For this purpose Hardy created the term "magic pedagogue", which, however, criticized many professional colleagues. He does not hide the mentioned slight speech impairment (stuttering) that he has, but went public with it aggressively, also to help other people, especially children, and to encourage them if they also have to live with a disability.

Hardy came under fire again when he posed magic tricks on the front pages for the children's magazine YPS-mit Gimmick . He was accused of trickery. At Yps he was 'chief magician' for years; in a column on page 2 he was a regular contributor to magic tricks. He was also regularly featured on the magazine cover. Therefore he is known to a whole generation of readers of this once very popular magazine.

Hardy was the first magician (at least in German-speaking countries) to attract attention again in 1980 with an entry in the Guinness Book of Records when he invented the "permanent magic" division and proved that he performed magic tricks for 60 hours without interruption.

In 1976 he took over the magic business of the magician Max Haug. Shortly afterwards he expanded it to include the Zauberstadl , a destination with a theater. But just three years later he had to file for bankruptcy.

He received a special kind of honor in June 2015: a special exhibition was opened under the motto Hardy - Kinderzauberer - Zauberkastenmacher in the world's largest magic box museum in Vienna . Hardy has lived in the Augsburg Fuggerei since 2017 .

Others

In the 1980s, Hardy was a guest on the quiz show What Am I? , but not as a celebrity whose name was to be guessed, but as a person whose profession was to be determined. The quiz master Robert Lembke mistakenly assumed that the advice team did not know Hardy, so he did not come to the show in disguise, as was the precautionary measure done in similar cases with more well-known people. However, " Marianne " from the advice team recognized him straight away. According to the unwritten rule, Marianne indicated this and was eliminated from guessing for this round.

In 2010, Hardy hit the headlines when local authorities, in a kind of provincial farce , made him numerous, sometimes difficult or impossible to fulfill, conditions in connection with a magic trick with a rabbit and invoked animal welfare. For example, it was forbidden for the audience to applaud the rabbit trick.

In Hardy's name, with it on the outer packaging, 60,000 Hardy magic boxes in different versions were and are (as of 2003) sold annually. In the period 1978 to 2003 that totaled around 1.2 million.

Awards, special achievements, honors

For his services to German and international magic, Hardy was awarded the “German Prize for Artistic Lifetime Achievement” October 20, 2012 - Internationales Artistenmuseum Klosterfelde.

Hardy set the Guinness World Record in permanent magic three times: 1982, 1983, 1985.

In 1986, the government of Swabia certified the Hardy Magic Stage under the file number 241-5630 / 10 that its performances fulfill the same cultural tasks as state and municipal theaters.

Publications (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Interview in Farang from 2003
  2. ↑ Hardy with the egg bag in Yps with Gimmick , No. 166, 1987
  3. ^ Advertisement in Magische Welt , No. 1, 1979
  4. ↑ Hardy on the cover of Yps No. 166
  5. ↑ Hardy on the cover of Yps No. 167
  6. ↑ Hardy on the cover of Yps No. 168
  7. ↑ Hardy on the cover of Yps No. 169
  8. ↑ Hardy on the cover of Yps No. 170
  9. ↑ Article in Magische Welt, No. 2, 33rd year, 1984, p. 138
  10. ↑ Interview in Magische Welt , Volume 28, Volume 6 (November / December 1979), p. 267 ff.
  11. ↑ Article on Trendy One  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.trendyone.de  
  12. ^ Augsburg: A well-known magician now lives in the Fuggerei , Augsburger Allgemeine , November 2, 2017
  13. ↑ Article in tz
  14. ^ Interview in Farang from 2003
personal data
SURNAME Hardy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smutny, Erhard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German magician, author
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Aichach