Eugen Sandow: The Draft Dodger Who Invented Bodybuilding Posing

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Eugen Sandow was born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller in 1867 in Königsberg, in a family that had converted from Judaism to Lutheranism and hoped he would become a minister. In 1885, facing the Prussian military draft, he fled, joined traveling circuses and took his mother's maiden name. In Brussels the strongman Ludwig Durlacher, known as Professor Attila, coached him in showmanship, and in 1889 Sandow beat the reigning champion at a London strongman contest. Florenz Ziegfeld booked him for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago for 10 percent of gross receipts, noticed crowds cared more about his muscles than his lifts, and created muscle display shows with Sandow powdered white like marble.

Sandow filmed flexing routines for Thomas Edison in 1894, measured classical statues at the British Museum to define his Grecian Ideal, opened Institutes of Physical Culture, launched a magazine in 1898 and coined the term body-building. In 1901 he staged a bodybuilding competition at the Royal Albert Hall judged by sculptor Sir Charles Lawes and Arthur Conan Doyle. He became physical instructor to King George V and trained British recruits in World War I. He died in London in 1925 at 58 of an aortic aneurysm, and his wife Blanche buried him in an unmarked grave at Putney Vale.

• His spring-grip dumbbells were designed to recruit more muscle fibers through constant tension.
• Rival strongman William Bankier challenged him in 1900 and called him a coward when Sandow ignored him.
• In 1902 in New York Katie Brumbach lifted 300 pounds overhead while Sandow could only bring it to his chest, and she took the stage name Sandwina.
• Scholars link his 1905 tour of India to the blending of his calisthenics with postures in modern postural yoga.
• A plaque was placed in 2002, and his great-grandson later marked the grave with a pink sandstone monolith; the Mr. Olympia trophy is called the Sandow.