Eisenhardt, Max

Known by many names, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr is a powerful mutant willing to go to any extreme to protect his species as Magneto, the master of magnetism. During his youth, he suffered atrocities at the hands of the Nazis in Auschwitz. After escaping, he learned at the cost of his own daughter's life that he had the mutant ability to generate and control magnetic fields, a condition that caused additional hate and fear from those who were different from him. Being a target for so long and explicitly rejecting the possibility of any harmony with humans, Magneto aimed to conquer the world to enable mutants, whom he refers to as *Homo superior*, to become the dominant species on Earth.

Seeking to subjugate humanity by brute force, he found himself in direct conflict with his former ally, Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men, mutants who shared a dream of peaceful mutant-human coexistence. His reputation as an inspirational figurehead and a dangerous threat, as the leader of the Brotherhood and the Acolytes, granted him the rule over the nation of Genosha, until its destruction. Magneto has also had the X-Men as his allies on different occasions, expressing his intentions to try Xavier's way and even his students' perspective, by following Cyclops.

## Max Eisenhardt

### Aliases

Magneto (criminal moniker), Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Auschwitz I.D. #24005[2] (retcon from #214782), "The Creator," Eric Lensher, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Erik the Red, Grey King, King Erik Magnus, the Leader, Magnus, Master (by Toad), Master of Magnetism, Merciless Magneto, Michael Xavier, Miraculous Magneto, Mr. Sullivan, Phantom Saboteur, "Red," White King, White Pilgrim

### Relatives

Anya Eisenhardt (daughter), Lorna Dane (daughter), Wanda Maximoff (adopted daughter), Pietro Maximoff (adopted son), Magda Eisenhardt (wife, dead), Jakob Eisenhardt (father, dead), Edie Eisenhardt (mother, dead), Ruth Eisenhardt (sister, dead), Erich Eisenhardt (paternal uncle, dead), Anya (mother-in-law, dead)

### Occupation

Would-be conqueror, mutants' right activist, vigilante, recluse, ruler, headmaster, terrorist, Nazi hunter, carpenter, prisoner of war, revolutionary, Lord of Genosha, volunteer orderly, teacher

## History

### Early Years

Max was born to Jakob and Edie Eisenhardt, and raised in Nuremberg, Germany by a middle-class Jewish family. While attending a local school he became attracted to a young Romani girl named Magda, the daughter of the school cleaner. Max would do things such as craft her necklaces and excel in sporting events to gain her attention. While returning from school one day, Max encountered a Nazi rally and found his uncle Erich beaten and wearing a sign saying that he had shamed a German woman (as he was Jewish, and she was not). Not long after, at a school event, Max won a javelin competition to impress Magda, and the following day was accused of cheating (under the belief that a Jewish boy could not possibly exceed his "Aryan" classmates). Max was told to either give up his medal or recreate the throw with a "regulation" javelin. After winning the competition a second time, Max was again accused of cheating, expelled, and beaten by the other children.

### Escape From Germany

His father Jakob had been a World War I veteran and refused to believe that the nation he had fought for was turning its back on him. Max accompanied his father to see Major Jurgen Scharf, whom he saved in World War I. His father was left waiting for the major and beaten by a troupe of Nazis for "making trouble" in Scharf's office and resisting arrest. After hours of beating, Major Scharf threw Jakob out of his office, stating that the Nazis would have killed him and that they were now even. As things worsened in Germany, Max's father was forced to accept reality, and brought the family to Warsaw, Poland after Kristallnacht.

They would not be safe from the Nazis in Warsaw, as the city came under German occupation following the breakout of World War II. The family lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw where the Nazis built the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940. Max became a smuggler in order to help his family survive. When the Nazis began deporting the ghetto's residents to Treblinka extermination camp in July 1942, Max and his family escaped from Warsaw. On their way to a hideout, they were captured by Nazi soldiers. As they were about to be executed, Jakob saved Max's life by pushing him out of the firing line without anyone noticing. The corpses and Max were buried in a mass grave.

### Holocaust

Max was eventually found and captured and would spend his early teens imprisoned at the Vernichtungslager (extermination camp) in Auschwitz, Poland.

In 1944, Max witnessed Mister Sinister and geneticist Josef Mengele, operating at Auschwitz. Max didn't trust Mengele and, consequently, became a Sonderkommando to avoid selection for the geneticist's experiments. Cleaning out the furnaces of the crematoria, he discovered the bodies of his friends who had been selected by the geneticist and turned into monsters. The only member of his family to survive the Holocaust, Max learned first-hand how brutally human beings could treat those they considered different. Max was unable to access his mutant powers at puberty, like most, due to a bout of hepatitis from working in the camp.

While in Auschwitz, Max was reunited with Magda and continued to smuggle food and supplies to her. Max saved Magda from the gas chambers and then from execution; as the Sonderkommando revolted, the two of them escaped together. For several years, Max and Magda lived in a Carpathian Mountain village, and eventually they were married. They had a daughter, Anya.

Not satisfied with the simple life of a mountain village, Max moved his family to the then-Soviet city of Vinnytsia so he could better himself. On their very first day in the city, Max consciously used his powers for the first time. Max magnetically hurled a crowbar at his boss who was cheating him of his pay. When he returned to the inn where Magda, Anya, and he were staying, Max saw that it was on fire and his daughter Anya was trapped on the upper floors. He tried to use his new-found powers to save his daughter, but his boss had called the KGB and they beat up Max and held him down, preventing him from rescuing Anya. The child fell, burning to her death, in front of her father. Max then used his powers to destroy the men holding him, the crowd watching, and a large section of the city of Vinnytsia as revenge. Terrified by her husband's powers and overwhelmed by the tragedy, Magda fled, unknowingly pregnant with twins. As Max attempted to bury his daughter, more soldiers arrived after hearing what he had done and attacked him. After being shot in the head, Max forced the soldiers to turn their own guns on themselves.

### Erik Magnus Lehnsherr

Max, at this point, sought out a forger named Georg Odekirk, who was supposed to be among the best, and asked him to create a new identity for him, a Sinti Romani Holocaust survivor called "Erik Lehnsherr", so that Max could search for Magda among her own people, but his efforts were vain as Magda actually died in Transia. Max added "Magnus" as his middle name and, although many knew of his history as a prisoner, no one knew of his life as Max Eisenhardt.

Eventually Magnus traveled to Haifa, Israel, possibly under the guise "Erik Magnus". Magnus worked there as a volunteer orderly at a psychiatric hospital for Holocaust victims. It was there Erik first met and became friends with Charles Xavier. Magnus and Xavier frequently debated the subject of mutants' coexistence with the rest of humanity, though neither revealed to the other that they themselves were mutants. While Xavier was idealistic, and believed that humans and mutants could co-exist, Magneto's experiences had hardened him, and he had come to believe that humanity would never allow mutants to live in peace. After the two men joined forces to rescue their friend, Gabrielle Haller, from Baron von Strucker and his Hydra agents and revealed their powers to each other, Magnus seized Hydra's store of Nazi gold and left for parts unknown, realizing his and Xavier's views were incompatible.

### Mutant War

For some time after, Magnus attempted to stay on the path of righteousness and used his powers to help track Nazi war criminals. However, while working for one of the Western intelligence agencies (most likely the C.I.A., the British SIS, or MI6), Magnus was also working for the Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, and instead of turning the Nazis over to his "control" government after he found them, he was giving them over to Israel for trial. It seems his "control" knew about Magnus' status as double-agent and let him give the Nazi war criminals to Israel, as long as they were Nazis that the USSR had optioned. When Magnus captured and attempted to give Nazi Hans Richter to Israel, agents from the unnamed Western intelligence agency decided to put an end to his activities. They murdered Magnus' girlfriend at the time, Isabelle, right in front of his eyes. In a rage, Magnus killed his "control" and cohorts. What little trust he still had for humanity shattered, he took the name "Magneto" and began planning his campaign against the human race. Magnus later found himself in Brooklyn, New York, under the guise "Michael Xavier", where he had learned that mutants were gathering and hiding from humans in plain sight. Magnus asked the mutant Cassandra Michaels to create his first uniform, believing that with all of the colorfully costumed heroes and villains walking the Earth, it was imperative that he do the same to make a statement. After accompanying Cassandra on a date, they were attacked by an underground monster and Magnus entertained the idea of becoming a hero, but after feeling Cassandra was ungrateful, realized that his heart lay elsewhere.

At some point, Magneto had an affair with a married woman by the name of Suzanna Dane. Suzanna bore Magneto a child named Lorna but hid the true parentage of the child from her husband Arnold. Arnold eventually learned of his wife's infidelity and confronted her while flying her and Lorna on a plane. Unbeknownst to her parents, Lorna had inherited her father's powers over magnetism. She was upset by her parents fighting, causing her powers to manifest, destroying the plane and inadvertently killing her parents. Magneto was drawn to the crash site by the magnetic pulse unleashed by his young daughter. Believing she was not ready for the life he had to offer, he had his associate Mastermind use his powers of illusion to re-write her memories, erasing the encounter and the crash from her memory.

Years later, Magneto reemerged in costume and helmet, designed to shield him from telepathy. He was determined to conquer the human race, to prevent their oppression of mutants, as the self-proclaimed savior of mutantkind. Magneto had also created an orbital space station, Asteroid M, to use as a base and began to assemble his original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. One of his early recruits, Astra, was simply infatuated with Magneto and could care less about the mutant cause, but she left the group under mysterious circumstances before it made its first public appearance. Simply needing powerful mutants in the coming war, Magnus recruited twins for the Brotherhood after he rescued them from a mob of ignorant humans but was unaware that they would one day be presumed to be the children that Magda had hidden from him. Pietro soon wished to leave constantly and Wanda disagreed with Magneto's evil ambitions, but Wanda felt that she owed Magneto her life and Pietro would never leave her side. It was certain at this time that Magneto was in a psychotic and manic state, brought on by a combination of factors, including the overuse of his immense powers. On the anniversary of his liberation from Auschwitz, Charles Xavier, now a professor and confined to a wheelchair, met with Magneto at the site of the camp. Professor Xavier pleaded with Magneto that the actions he would set into motion were no different than what the Nazis did to him years earlier, but Magneto laughed and patronized the professor for claiming to lead mutants but being confined to a chair. Professor Xavier replied that he may have lost the use of his legs but not his heart, something Magneto could not say. After both men reminded each other that they had the power to destroy the other, Magneto left, with Professor Xavier hoping that he would see the error of his ways.

Unbeknownst to Magneto, his use of his powers had a negative effect on his mental stability, making his behavior increasingly unstable. The more Magneto abused his powers, the more insane he would become.

### X-Men and the Brotherhood

Professor Xavier's original team of X-Men thwarted Magneto's first act of terrorism in his war with humanity, the takeover of the Cape Citadel missile base. When they next clashed, Magneto overthrew the government of Santo Marco, setting himself up as absolute ruler, and led his original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which included Wanda and Pietro, now known as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Not until years later would Magneto learn that they were allegedly his children. After the X-Men liberated Santo Marco, Magneto kidnapped Angel and the X-Men followed to Asteroid M. Asteroid M was destroyed in the battle with the X-Men, when Scarlet Witch sabotaged a button, designed to kill the X-Men.