Karl Mörke

Karl Nikolaus Peter Mörke (born March 2, 1889 in Niederzerf , † December 15, 1946 in Cologne ) was a German weightlifter . He was world heavyweight champion in 1920. After 1920 he became a professional athlete.

Life

Karl Mörke grew up in Cologne as the son of parents who were enthusiastic about strength sports. He and his brothers therefore started dumbbell exercises at an early age, whereby all possible objects had to be used as dumbbells because the family could not afford real dumbbells. At the age of 14, Karl Mörke began training in a railway depot. There, too, he was constantly dealing with heavy objects. At the age of 16 he founded a weightlifting club with a brother and a boy from the neighborhood, in which he then trained almost daily. In 1909 he won the Rheinland already several competitions in weightlifting and 1910 he became a master of the Rhineland and Westphalia . During the First World War Karl Mörke served in a railway company and survived the war unharmed.

Then he started again in international and national weightlifting competitions until 1920. In 1920 Karl Mörke became a professional athlete and went to the United States , where he settled in New Haven . At the beginning of the 1930s he returned to Germany and performed as a power acrobat with his own small circus in many European countries. At the end of the 1930s he gave up his circus and worked again for the Reichsbahn . In 1945 he was seriously injured in one of the Allied bombing raids on Cologne. Karl Mörke died as a result of these injuries the following year.

Career as a weightlifter (amateur)

In 1912, the 23-year-old Karl Mörke fought his five-year-old Cologne compatriot Heinrich Schneidereit , who was already a very successful weightlifter at the championships of the Rhineland, in a tough fight, which Schneidereit just won, but which Karl Mörke already indicated what a tremendous talent he was. In this competition Karl Mörke u. a. in one-armed pushing 100 kg and in two-armed pushing with restricted transfer 150 kg.

At the German championship in Frankfurt / Main in 1912 , he took 3rd place in the heavyweight division behind Heinrich Rondi from Düsseldorf , 547.5 kg and Heinrich Schneidereit, 542.5 kg, with 450 kg in the pentathlon.

At the German championship in Kassel in 1913, Karl Mörke increased his performance enormously. He achieved 550 kg in the pentathlon and was defeated by the winner Paul Trappen from Trier by only 2.5 kg. Third place went to Hermann Görner from Leipzig with 520 kg.

In 1919 Karl Mörke became the first German heavyweight champion in Munich . He achieved 540 kg in the pentathlon, with which he won ahead of Hermann Görner, 510 kg and Josef Straßberger from Munich, 502.5 kg. He won this title in Stuttgart in 1920 . At these German championships he achieved a new German best in the pentathlon with 557.5 kg. He relegated Heinrich Steinborn from Düsseldorf, 535 kg, and Edmund Nummer from Hamburg , 447.5 kg, to places two and three.

Karl Mörke achieved the greatest sporting success of his career at the 1920 World Cup in Vienna . He won there in a four-way fight in the heavyweight division with 456.7 kg and was clearly ahead of the Austrians Franz Aigner and Alscher. The individual performances of Karl Mörke were 75 kg in one-armed tearing, 100 kg in one-armed pushing, 110 kg in two-armed pushing and 171.7 kg in two-armed pushing (not freely implemented).

Karl Mörke was unable to take part in the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp because German athletes were excluded from these games. With his achievements, which he brought at this time, he was far ahead of the Italian Felipe Bottino , who became Olympic champion in 1920 and in a three-way fight 270 kg (one-armed snatch 70 kg, one-armed pushing 85 kg and two-arm pushing with free transfer 115 kg) scored.

Karl Mörke's best performances in his amateur days were: 85 kg one-armed snatch, 112.5 kg one-armed pushing, 110 kg two-armed pulling, 137.5 kg two-arm pushing and 171.7 kg two-arm pushing with unfrequent transfer.

Karl Mörke as a professional athlete

At the end of 1920, disappointed by the exclusion of German athletes from the Olympic Games, Karl Mörke decided to become a professional athlete. He went to the United States and was based in New Haven . In America he showed his enormous strength exercises in variety theaters , circuses and sports clubs. His greatest rival was Heinrich "Milo" Steinborn from Düsseldorf, who also went to the United States and became a professional athlete there.

In New Haven at the end of 1920 he showed the following achievements: in 19 appearances in one day he pressed a 112.5 kg dumbbell ten times and did squats with 225 kg. He increased his maximum performance in two-armed pushing with unfree transferring to 175 kg, but not confirmed, he is said to have pushed 182.5 kg.

Karl Mörke was, probably due to his physical requirements, only 1.59 m tall and, as a professional athlete, weighed around 110 kg, a specialist in squats. In this exercise he fought hard fights with Milo Steinborn and increased his performance to 292.5 kg.

The thigh Karl Mörkes are 86 cm in circumference have had his upper arms cm 46th

After his death, Karl Mörke fared like Hermann Görner. While he is largely forgotten in Germany, he is considered one of the pioneers of powerlifting in the United States .

swell

• Athletics magazine , number 9/1967, page 22.
• Tests of strength, strong men then and now , Sport-Verlag Berlin, 1985, page 236.
• Website "ditillo2.blogspot.com"

Web links

• Portrait of Karl Mörke in English
• Page of the Illustrierte Österreichischen Sportblatt, digitized edition, with photo by Karl Mörkes

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death certificate no. 4902 from December 16, 1946, registry office Cologne I. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved May 3, 2018 .