Bellachini

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Bellachini or Samuel Bellachini (born May 1, 1827 in Ligota ; † January 24, 1885 in Parchim ; actually Samuel Berlach ) was one of the popular and well-known magicians of the 19th century in Germany.

Life

Samuel Bellachini was born as the son of a Jewish farmer in Ligota, Poland, and began to do magic at an early age. He broke off an apprenticeship as a plumber and emigrated to America. Since he could not gain a foothold there, he returned to Europe. In Lisbon , where the ship landed, he learned new magic tricks from gypsies and began performing in restaurants and markets and earning the money to return to Poland. For a while in the early 1840s, Berlach worked with Wiljalba Frickel, who was ten years his senior, as his assistant and student.

At the age of 16 he gave his first major public performance under the name Bellachini ; from then on he traveled with great success for forty years as a fairground and hostel magician, mainly through Germany. In comparison to many of his professional colleagues, Bellachini did not have great manual dexterity, but rather impressed his audience with his stately appearance and the equipment used. Bellachini traveled through Germany with a popular spectacle, which he called Egyptian Magic , and showed special show effects, for example he conjured chicken eggs out of his assistant's mouth or beheaded him on the open stage. He accompanied his demonstrations with a humorous torrent of speech in broken German.

Bellachini was extremely enterprising: he made sure that articles about his shows appeared regularly in the local newspapers and had eye-catching advertising posters printed. The large number of appearances made him one of the most popular and well-known European magicians of the 19th century.

One of his two daughters was Tamara Hervay von Kirchberg (born in Posen in 1860 ), known through a scandal marriage .

Grave in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee

Lucas Strack-Bellachini referred to himself as his successor, also referred to as Bellachini II in artist archives or as Der Marburger Bellachini . Because the stage name was very popular, around 60 other magicians later made use of the name Bellachini . See also Franz Schweizer Bellachini.

anecdote

Bellachini was in high favor with Kaiser Wilhelm I ; in Bad Gastein he wished to see a feat one day; Bellachini, who, as a native of Poland, spoke very original German, was embarrassed for a moment. Then he handed the emperor a pen and asked him to write: Bellachini is banned from my court from now on ; The monarch said with a smile that he couldn't write that because it wasn't true. But the artist replied that it wasn't a shame, since it was the beginning of the feat. So the Emperor sat down at the table, but the quill he dipped in did not want to write; Finally Bellachini gave him another pen, and the Emperor asked what he should write next. Then the magician suggested: If your Majesty deign to write: "I appoint Bellachini to the court magician" . The emperor laughed, and now the pen did not fail and Bellachini was allowed to call himself court magician from then on.

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SAMUEL BERLACH.
  2. ^ Karl-Heinz Gimbel: The Marburger Bellachini, Memories of Lucas Strack-Bellachini (1861-1930) , Marburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89703-793-9
personal data
SURNAME Bellachini
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bellachini, Samuel; Berlach, Samuel (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Magician
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Ligota , Poland
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1885
Place of death Parchim