The great impresario Martin Beck advised the struggling performer to shed traditional magic and to concentrate upon escapes. The year 1899 was a watershed in Houdini's life. Techniques and deceptions of fraudulent spiritualism that would influence Houdini's entire life emerge also in the images of these early years. By taking the name "Houdini," he likened himself to Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, the father of modern magic.
Always engaged intellectually with ancestor figures, Ehrich Weiss looked to the past for inspiration. The lives of these three young people would be devoted to the illusion arts. This was Theodore Hardeen, born Ferencz Deszo Weisz on March 4, 1876. Among Houdini's siblings one brother would follow him into magic.
At his side emerges a figure of intelligence, spirit and resolve: his wife, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner Houdini. They depict him working to develop the physical stamina, dexterity, showmanship and persona that would take him from the bottom of performance venues to the top of the vaudeville stage. Images from the early years show a determined young man adapting to a country radically different from his parents' homeland. Having lost his father at an early age, Houdini sustained an exceptionally strong relationship with his mother, Cecilia Steiner Weiss, both as a child and as an adult. His tenure proved short, however, and after a life of hardship he died on October 5, 1892. Mayer Weiss was to serve as rabbi of the German-speaking Zion Reform Jewish Congregation in Appleton, Wisconsin. Their name had been changed from Weisz to Weiss by immigration officials upon their arrival in the United States c. When this postcard was written, Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss was father and husband to the impoverished immigrant family struggling to become established in America while communicating primarily in German, Hungarian, and Yiddish. A postcard from "Your truant son, Ehrich Weiss," to the mother he adored is the earliest example of Houdini's handwriting in the collections of the Library of Congress, relic of the early evasion by the young man who had been born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874. The future "Genius of Escape Who Will Startle and Amaze" ran away from home when he was twelve. HOUDINI: A BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY HOUDINI: A BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY 1878-1898: From Hungary To America, The First Stage
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