Gustav Grimm

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Gustav Grimm (born February 24, 1886 in Eschweiler ; † November 20, 1958 ) was a German strength acrobat.

Live and act

Gustav Grimm was born as the son of an innkeeper couple and grew up in Cologne. Although he was rather small and skinny in stature, he began strength training at a young age with dumbbells and expanders, which were just in fashion at the time. In his parents' restaurant he met the boss of the Karma troupe , who accepted Grimm into his artist group in 1894 at the age of 8. On September 17, 1894, Grimm made his first public appearance as the head of a column of four. In the course of his 5-year training, he rose from the upper man to the middle man to the under man of acrobatic numbers. Grown up, Grimm was only 1.61 m tall, but the neck, upper arms and calves were each 42 cm in circumference.

Together with the Englishman Gus Nippes, he developed his own performance in later years: the Guss & Guss, power juggling, with which both traveled around the world for two years. This tour took her to what was then German South West Africa, the USA, East Asia and Australia, where Grimm managed to wrestle a bull in a circus as part of a bet. After separating from Nippes, Grimm first worked as a catcher in a flying trapeze performance, "Flying Banvards" , and later with the Franklin troop, which worked with trampolines.

In the First World War Gustav Grimm was seriously wounded and fell into French captivity. His legs were shot through, but his arms were unharmed. So Grimm continued his strength training and, after having worked for a short time as an assistant for a small animal trainer, went self-employed again and appeared under the name "Guss, die eiserne Hand" at fairgrounds and in show booths. Other names with which he went down in the history of artistry were "The man with the strong hand" or "The modern Götz von Berlichingen" .

In 1922 Grimm met Maria Kleinermann, whom he married in the same year. Together with her, he developed the numbers that would make him widely and lastingly famous and which earned him the reputation of a power phenomenon: with his bare hands he tore up three decks of cards (96 sheets) or 420 sheets of newspaper on top of each other. He chopped wood with the edge of his right hand while his wife, as assistant, loosened up the performances in a humorous way. Grimm often appeared in a white tuxedo, his wife in an evening dress. With his body weight of only 62 kilograms, but with well-trained abdominal muscles, Gustav Grimm had devised a special advertising gimmick: He promised every viewer 100 marks who could lift Grimm ten centimeters off the floor. During a guest performance in Essen in 1925, he increased the bonus to 1,000 marks when his counterpart weighed in at 165 kilograms. He didn't have to pay, as he once revealed in old age.

Although Gustav Grimm was spared military action in World War II because of his wounds , his existence was destroyed. He moved to West Berlin and in 1947 went on tour through Germany again for six years. On December 31, 1953, he stood on stage for the last time and then retired. Grimm died at the age of 72 on November 20, 1958.

Private

In addition to strength acrobatics, Gustav Grimm also had other artistic talents: He painted and created lithographs. In an illustrated book entitled "The Human Body" he was depicted as the male counterpart to Pola Negri .

Gustav Grimm was married to his wife Maria until his death. With her he had the daughter Lilian, who was born in 1926 and got her first name after the silent film star Lillian Gish . She played the saxophone and accordion, could tap and made her first appearance as Lilian Guss at the age of 14. She died in 1992, her mother Maria had died in 1967.

literature

  • Lothar Groth: The strong men - a history of strength acrobatics , Henschelverlag Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-362-00223-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Lothar Groth: The strong men - a history of power acrobatics, Henschelverlag Berlin, 1987, page 152 ff, ISBN 3-362-00223-4
  2. ↑ a b c d ciao.de: Your story for the Ciao book, report of his granddaughter ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 14, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ciao.de
personal data
SURNAME Grimm, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German power acrobat
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Eschweiler
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1958