Herrmann the Great

Welcome to the Magic Poster Tour at Poe’s Magic Theatre, inside the historic Lord Baltimore Hotel.

This stop features An Evening in Spiritland with Herrmann the Great, a 1880 piece billed as “An Evening in Spiritland.”

A gilded frame surrounds a séance scene. Herrmann sits at a writing table while a pale spirit rises behind him, arms spread across the darkness. Ghostly faces and smaller figures gather at the margins, but the central pairing remains magician and apparition.

The image borrows the visual language of Spiritualism, which was then a public fascination as well as a stage subject. The poster promises an evening in ‘Spiritland,’ leaving the boundary between conjuring and contact deliberately theatrical. It invites the viewer to believe just long enough to buy a seat.

The original 1880 lithograph is held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This glare-free digital restoration is based on a photograph of the framed 2021 display print at Poe’s Magic Theatre; small details obscured by reflections have been reconstructed.

Herrmann the Great was the stage identity of Alexander Herrmann, a celebrated nineteenth-century magician known for his wit and polished performance style. By the time this lithograph was made in 1880, he had become one of the best-known magical entertainers in America.

The poster’s séance imagery reflects an era when audiences debated spiritualism, science, and deception in public. Herrmann could use that debate as theatre without asking the crowd to settle it first. The spirits arrive on the paper, the magician remains at the table, and the audience gets to decide what sort of evening it has entered.