Sandow, Eugen

1867–1925

Bodybuilder

Eugen Sandow, born in East Prussia as Friederich Wilhelm Muller, rose from a sideshow muscleman in the 1880s to international fame as a premier bodybuilder and, in the United States and Europe, a representative of an ideal physical masculine type. His image shaped the aesthetic and erotic sensibilities of millions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century fans, and the phrase “as strong as Sandow” became a byword for a strong man.

Sandow began bodybuilding in the midst of the Turnvereine, the German gymnastic movement of the 1880s. His professional career began with a circus in 1885 but changed significantly in Brussels when he met the German impresario Louis Attila, who trained Sandow as a weightlifter and music hall entertainer. Attila was soon encouraging Sandow to pose for sculptors, painters, and photographers, who documented his remarkable physique and self-control. Sandow then moved to London, where he became an international celebrity, performing on stage in a leopard skin, tights, and sandals. Lifting a piano or a small horse on stage, he thrilled audiences by displaying his physique and strength, as well as his wit, intelligence, and agility. In 1893 the Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld expanded Sandow's show business career by bringing his act to New York City. Together they made bodybuilding glamorous and popular in the United States.

Sandow's fame reflected and reinforced a fundamental transformation in American concepts of masculinity in the late nineteenth century. Amid the growing influence of Darwinian biology (such as the theories of natural selection and “survival of the fittest”) and increasing anxiety that modern urban life had sapped the physical vigor of white middle-class American men, Sandow represented a new emphasis on bodily strength as a basic marker of manhood. He therefore appealed to a culture that was developing new ideas of “muscular Christianity” and the “strenuous life.” Sandow's emphasis on proper diet, exercise, and a positive mental attitude coincided with the Victorian-era concern for self-discipline and physical purity. That Sandow was white and German inspired Anglo-Saxon Americans, who were concerned about the influx of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and Asia.

Touted as the perfect man, Sandow became an entrepreneur for bodybuilding. He wrote articles connecting strength with health in Cosmopolitan magazine, published inspirational books, and sold his own dumbbells and exercise lessons. His performance at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 inspired the young Bernarr Macfadden (who became another prominent exponent of muscular masculinity) and introduced physical training to millions of Americans.

Perhaps Sandow's greatest impact occurred when he organized the first nationwide bodybuilding competition in England in 1901, thus stimulating other national contests elsewhere. French contests also judged the most handsome athlete, and German contests rewarded the strongest weightlifter, but Americans combined these competitions in the 1930s to find “Mr. America,” the man with the finest physique. All of these exhibitions and performances, like modern sports in general, linked a strong manly body with a strong manly character.

By the time of his death in 1925, Sandow had become such a popular figure that his wife, Blanche, buried him in an unmarked grave at the Putney Vale Cemetery in London. But Sandow's influence extended far beyond his death; the emphasis on physique and health that he helped establish as gauges of manhood has persisted into the twenty-first century.

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