“I’m a little sick,” says Fritzi Gerda Roeder, 85, suddenly after eating a Sachertorte in a Grünwald café. “I think I need a schnapps.” While you’re already worrying, she takes the playing cards that she has lying next to her. “Fortunately, as a sorceress, you’re prepared,” she says, pulling out a card and rolling it up to act as a shot glass. So that nothing runs out, she places a second card underneath. Then she pours a liquid into it from a small bottle.
No, this one doesn’t drip out of the bottom of the improvised shot glass. Not even when Roeder takes the card away and instead presses his little finger to keep the liquid in the glass. Even as she tells and demonstrates how fine ladies always spread their little fingers when holding a glass, nothing drips from the card shot glass. There’s probably nothing in it, you think. But then Roeder pours the shot glass into a brass bowl he has brought with him. And a clear liquid comes out.
The pot that never gets empty – magician Fritzi Gerda Roeder amazes her audience.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
At the age of 75 she stopped doing magic professionally, says the native of Grünwald. After the ten-year break, she had to practice a bit before meeting in the café. But it still works perfectly. Also the thing with the thread. “No,” says Roeder, “that’s not a thread, that’s a story.” Then she begins to tear the thread unwound from a spool into small pieces. She talks non-stop. “Imagine, that’s the buffet here in the café. Everything there is: tarts and croissants.” A word comes with each piece torn off, leaving you swaying back and forth as you watch and listen and gaze into the sorceress’ eyes. Finally, she takes the torn pieces and rolls them into a ball. Then she slowly unrolls the thread again – and it’s quite a long piece. “And the buffet is complete again,” she says.
Her appearance at a company party was so successful that she resigned the next day
You already know the magic tricks from her book “Ein (v) enchanted life”, which Roeder published last year. In 1956 Fritzi Gerda Roeder was the first woman in the Munich magic ring, now she is the only one far and wide who has written a magician autobiography. In the 483-page work, she looks back on her performances as a sorceress. At the age of 57, as an employee of a PR agency in her company on the Bavaria film site, she gave a performance for her boss’s 60th birthday. For this she had put on a Charleston dress and prepared herself extensively with rehearsed magic.
The success that evening was so great and the colleagues so enthusiastic that Roeder decided to turn her hobby, which she had cultivated since she was a child, into a career. The very next day she resigned, booked a trip to a magic convention, and placed an ad in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in which she offered her services as a sorceress. Countless clown and magic performances follow at children’s parties, weddings, round birthdays and with an always different and surprised audience.
Roeder always wrote down unusual events after the performances. After all, she had a huge stack of ring binders and notes at home. She wrote the book from this material and from her memory. When reading the stories, in which strange things and small glitches sometimes happen, you can go on stage with the sorceress. You see the audience from her point of view and the often bizarre situations in which she has to appear. Once, for example, she lands in front of a drunken crowd who have been waiting for their food for hours and have already emptied a few crates of beer. The birthday boy is so tipsy that he doesn’t even notice the magic tricks.
In her autobiography, Fritzi Gerda Roeder tells of her “(v)enchanted life”.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
In another scene, she comes to a company that also hardly cares about her. A row of people at the table just keeps turning their backs on her and a man interrupts with heckling. “I thought about what I’m going to do now,” recalls Roeder at the meeting in the café. “But I didn’t want to give up, I wanted to do magic and I wanted my fee.” So she addresses the troublemaker directly, in an absurd way that comes to her mind: “In Salzburg I once saw a dog that had black curly hair like you. Are you related to him?” Asked she at that time. There was a second of silence, then a man turned around and said, “Yes, but in a second marriage.” With this sentence the ice was broken and it was a funny performance.
Roeder also had magical experiences. For example, when she performed on behalf of a shop in Berchtesgaden, she felt particularly connected to her audience. “It was such a wonderful day,” she enthuses to this day. “We were a unit, the audience and I.” Many came back for each new performance that day, and they understood each other perfectly. To this day, Roeder fondly remembers that afternoon.
The first is Melusine, which she acquired at a magic congress in 1956
It never gets boring when you travel from performance to performance with Fritzi Gerda Roeder in the book. Each time you are curious who will open the door this time, what kind of people the sorceress has to “transform” that day. Because when the magic reaches the viewers and listeners, the transformation has been successful. Most of the time the sorceress did it. Sometimes not, sometimes she had to think up crazy things to enchant people. But that has always appealed to her – and that’s also the appeal of her book: Small embarrassments, initially disinterested people, strange locations – the book is teeming with amusing scenes and descriptions. You can also learn a lot from the life of the sorceress.
By the way, the book begins with Melusine. That’s what Roeder calls a small rope that she bought in 1956 at a magic congress in Nuremberg. Now in the café she demonstrates his magical abilities. The rope has the ability to move through the material of a bracelet – which the viewer was allowed to examine beforehand. Surprise! No, none of the magic will be performed a second time. This is strictly forbidden. Magic only works once.
Fritzi G. Roeder, A (v)enchanted life, www.bod.de