Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
Hans Ehrich where the son Hans was born in Helsinki in 1942. Due to the Finnish Continuation War the family fled to Sweden in 1944. Hans Ehrich is grown up and educated in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. His German higher school examination (Abitur) he passed in Italy, at the Scuola Germanica di Roma. In early sketches from his teens Ehrich showed that he already was a skilful drawer. He created a design sketch for the interior of an open car with ergonomically shaped seats, neck rests and separated back seats already at an age of 16 years. From 1962