Milo Barus
Milo Barus (real name Emil Bahr ) (born February 27, 1906 in Alt Rothwasser , Austrian Silesia , † October 1, 1977 in Altötting , Upper Bavaria ) was a German strength athlete , strength acrobat and the strongest man in the world.
biography
Emil Bahr was born as the son of a state railroad employee in the Bohemian town of Alt-Rothwasser and grew up in Weidenau . Even as an apprentice in a mill, he was able to lift loads on his own that otherwise at least two full-grown journeymen would have to access together. After his apprenticeship as a miller, he went on a hike and became a member of an athletics club in Kundl . Back in Weidenau, he began to appear publicly as a strength athlete for the first time when he was eighteen and reached 280 kilograms in the Olympic three-way battle. In friendship matches with the best athletes from the athletic clubs in Bohemia and North Moravia, he was so successful in weightlifting and wrestling that in March 1925 the English professional wrestler Joseph Robinson visited the young heavy athlete and assessed his training performance. On this occasion Emil Bahr increased his triathlon result to 305 kilograms. Robinson concluded a professional contract with Bahr, who then competed as a professional wrestler at national championships in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Italy in 1925 and 1926 and collected first prizes and championship titles. At the Central European championships of professional wrestlers in Prague in 1926, he qualified for the final fight, which was advertised in the classic freestyle . During the fight, his opponent fell miserably after a head pull and broke his spine. As a celebrated winner, Emil Bahr received the Golden Belt of Prague , but renounced this award when he learned of the death of his opponent shortly afterwards.
In October 1926 Emil Bahr became a two-year military service, drafted into the Czechoslovak army and ended the contract as a professional wrestler. During his military service he found special attention and recognition from soldiers and officers due to his physical strength, which he was allowed to demonstrate in some demonstrations. Therefore, he planned to perform as a professional strength acrobat after military service and began to develop a program of artistic strengths. In doing so, he orientated himself on the attractions of famous men of strength, such as John Grün , Paul Bahn , Emil Naucke or Paul Trappen . After completing his military service, Emil Bahr became a member of the International Artist Lodge (IAL) in 1928 and first performed as a power acrobat in Luxembourg and the neighboring Belgian province of Luxembourg in memory of John Grün . He also got himself the stage name Milo Barus , which he had confirmed and legally protected by the IAL in 1929. He got his stage name from the name of Milo von Kroton , an athlete from ancient Greece and Olympic champion from 540 BC. BC, and derived from his family name Bahr . First engagements under the new artist name were extremely successful, so that he received an invitation to the world championship of the strongest men in the world on March 15, 1930 in Paris . Among the more than 40 international competitors in the Cirque Medrano were the two French favorites Ernest Cadine and Charles Rigoulot . The competition lasted three days. Milo Barus won the title of strongest man in the world and world champion in carrying loads . He then defended the world championship title in London in 1931 , where he appeared in the Bertram Mills Circus as a power acrobat in the Olympia . He was also world champion in Calcutta in 1932 , in Cairo in 1933 , in Buenos Aires in 1934 and in New York in 1935 . In the USA he was hired by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus . "A unique attraction in Milo Barus' program was climbing seventeen steps on a staircase with a seven hundred pound horse on his back." However, in November 1935 he suffered an accident in the ring. After an eight-week stay in New York hospitals, he returned to Europe from his world tour in poor health.
As the strongest man in the world , he had carried horses, wrestled bulls to the ground, tore up telephone books, pulled loaded furniture trucks with his teeth, or lifted trams off the rails. The earlier artistic achievements did not help him in his Bohemian homeland. In view of the increasing number of Nazi attacks, Emil Bahr, remembering his IAL membership, joined a German-Czech resistance group that was close to the Revolutionary Socialists around Siegfried Aufhäuser . He participated in building cross-border, anti-fascist connections and in actions against Henlein's Sudeten German Party . On May 19, 1936, he was arrested by the Gestapo after crossing the border . In an affidavit made by Milo Barus shortly before his death in 1976, he assured: “The circumstances in Germany prompted me to join Julius Fučík's Czech resistance movement . We were arrested with 16 like-minded people during actions for the 1936 Olympics and we were arrested at the People's Court, 3rd Senate, Dr. Springemann, sentenced to five years in prison for high treason. ”Until 1941 Emil Bahr was imprisoned in the prisons in Berlin-Moabit , Berlin-Plötzensee , Brandenburg-Görden and Gollnow / Pomerania . After his release from prison in his Bohemian homeland, he was placed under police supervision for three years and obliged to do forced labor in the quarry . In 1945 he took part in the liberation of Polish forced laborers . As an anti-fascist, he was deployed as a police officer in Weidenau by the Soviet occupying forces in 1945 . However, as a Sudeten German, he himself fell under the Beneš decrees and had to leave Czechoslovakia with his wife, whom he met shortly after his release from prison in 1941 . They drove to Bavaria on one of the last deportation trains for displaced persons.
In Bavaria in 1947 Emil Bahr prepared himself again for his artist role as Milo Barus through hard, intensive strength training. He made his post-war debut at the Krone Circus . After appearing in various circuses, he went on tour through Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden with his Olympia-Sportschau program until 1949 . In May 1950 he moved to Sweden with his circus program. This excursion ended unhappily in Ystad , where in September 1950 the Milo Barus circus was destroyed by fire. Completely penniless, he had to earn the necessary money for the return trip to Germany as an unskilled worker in the Malmö cement works. In 1951 Milo Barus performed his show of strength in smaller places in Lower Saxony that were spared from the war, including the Riefe house in Stollhamm and the Reitlander Hof in Reitland . Before he could really gain a foothold, he received an arrest warrant from a Munich court. The Bavarian judiciary persecuted him for his work as a police officer in Weidenau, where he had participated in the expropriation of some Nazi giants. With the help of a Danish lawyer, he managed to have the arrest warrant annulled in 1952. However, he no longer saw himself safe from persecution by the Nazi-polluted judiciary in West Germany . In December 1951, he drove a small truck full of props across the zone border at Rotheul from Bavaria to Thuringia. After a brief questioning and verification of his information by the People's Police , he was assigned an apartment in Sonneberg .
In Sonneberg he started again as Milo Barus with a new program. At first, the audience in the Sonneberg Society House and in many places in the Sonneberg district could marvel at him performing frequently. The residents of the immediate area celebrated him. He then traveled to cities and villages further away in southern Thuringia and quickly became known in the GDR . In 1953 he was hired as a strength acrobat by the Eros circus . After applying unsuccessfully to manage the Schlossberg in Sonneberg, he moved to Stadtroda in 1953 , where he and his wife took over the Klosterbräu-Stübl inn. From 1956 he was the host of the Meuschkensmühle in Eisenberger Mühltal near Weißenborn . He continued to perform as Milo Barus all over Thuringia until he suffered a heart attack in 1963. After that there were no more public appearances, apart from occasional, smaller performances in private company. With the end of his life in mind, Emil Bahr moved to Mühldorf am Inn in 1976 to be close to the relatives of his wife, who was five years his junior. The couple had remained childless and had no family members in the GDR. In the last year of his life he suffered several heart attacks. Severely disabled, Milo Barus died one year after leaving the GDR in the hospital in Altötting. His wife Martha, who had assisted him with his performances since 1947, died twelve years after him.
Afterlife
Before leaving the GDR in 1976, Milo Barus gave his props to his friend Roland Weise (died June 19, 2013), which he later exhibited in the International Artist Museum (closed in 2014). After this museum was closed, the Mühltal Museum of the Eisenberger Mühltal took over the objects and documents dedicated to Milo Barus. In the Meuschkensmühle and the Naupoldsmühle there are photos of his legendary acts of strength. In 1983 a film about his life was made ( Milo Barus, the strongest man in the world , directed by Henning Stegmüller , the role of Milo Barus was played by Günter Lamprecht ). Every year on October 3rd, the Milo Barus Cup (weight training competition) takes place at the foot of his house (today Milos Waldhaus restaurant) in the Eisenberger Mühltal.
In Stadtroda, where Milo Barus lived for some time from 1953, the state primary school bears his name in his honor.
literature
- Roland Weise: Milo Barus. The man who carried horses. Streitberger Verlag, Pößneck 1966
- Uwe Träger, Roland Weise: Milo Barus - the strongest man in the world. Erhard Lemm Verlag, Gera 2009, ISBN 3931635562
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Uwe Träger, Roland Weise: Milo Barus. The strongest man in the world. Verlag Erhard Lemm, Gera 2017, p. 17, ISBN 978-3-931635-93-0
- ↑ ibid, p. 18
- ↑ ibid, p. 19
- ↑ At one of his presentations in Luxembourg in 1929, Emil Bahr was honored by the Grand Duchess present as a worthy successor to John Grün .
- ↑ Famous personalities in the history of the Saale - Holzland - Kreis
- ^ Uwe Träger, Roland Weise: Milo Barus. The strongest man in the world. Verlag Erhard Lemm, Gera 2017, p. 25
- ↑ ibid, p. 27
- ↑ The International Artist Lodge (IAL) was a socialist-dominated trade union interest and professional association until its closure in 1933.
- ↑ Friedhelm Berger: Milo Barus, legend of strength, who lived near Weißenborn, would be 110 years old. Article in the Ostthüringer Zeitung (OTZ) on February 27, 2016.
- ↑ In the area of Weidenau- Jauernig - Ottmachau there have been granite quarries since 1872 , in which Soviet prisoners of war and Polish forced laborers were also employed during the Second World War.
- ^ Uwe Träger, Roland Weise: Milo Barus. The strongest man in the world. Verlag Erhard Lemm, Gera 2017, p. 35
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Barus, Milo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bahr, Emil (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German strength athlete, "strongest man in the world" |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 27, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Alt Rothwasser , Austrian Silesia (today: Czech Republic) |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1st October 1977 |
| Place of death | Altötting , Upper Bavaria |