The eldest son of a Jewish family, Eisenheim ne Eduard Abramowitz, was born in Bratislava. His father was a skilled cabinetmaker and Eisenheim soon becomes a cabinetmaker himself. His life takes a turn, however, when he encounters a traveling magician as a young boy. He becomes infatuated with magic. By age 28, Eisenheim has become an official magician with a magic show in Vienna where he becomes famous for his illusions. His audience believes that his illusions are so realistic that they start to call him a wizard who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for unholy powers. He perfects variations of famous illusions like the The Vanishing Lady and The Blue Room and eventually opens his own theater in 1898 called the Eisenheimhaus. Another competing magician named Benedetti becomes famous in Vienna and presents his own variations of Eisenheim’s famous illusions. One day during his shows, Benedetti’s trick fails and the audience sees the strategy behind the scenes. In another show, Benedetti disappears during the show and the audience believes Eisenheim has spirited him away to hell.  A second competing magician named Ernst Passauer becomes Eisenheim’s next rival and proves to be much more confident in his abilities. After a close race of equally brilliant illusion shows, Passauer’s final performance receives great uproar from the crowd as he takes off a mask and reveals himself to be Eisenheim. Eisenheim retires from magic for a year and lives like a recluse.  Later on, he finally returns to magic but this time his magic is mostly made of materializations and audience interaction. He begins to use phantom-like illusions of fictional people on stage but his audience believes them to be real ghosts. As his audience grows both in size and in their infatuation with Eisenheim's illusions again, rumors circulate that Eisenheim will be arrested for disturbing his audience and “shaking the foundations of the universe.”  When the police come to arrest Eisenheim, he escapes them by disappearing on stage just like a mere apparition in one of his illusions. He is never to be found again.