Rudolf Edinger

Rudolf Edinger (born November 22, 1902 in Erlaa , then Lower Austria ; † May 4, 1997 in Brunn am Gebirge , Lower Austria) was an Austrian weightlifter from the interwar period .

Life

Rudolf Edinger, 1924

Born the son of a butcher , he took up this profession after graduating from school. Soon after he was born, his father, who was also a cattle dealer, bought a house in Siebenhirten (today 1232 Vienna ), where a butcher's business existed until the 1980s. After the early death of his father, he continued to run the business and, after family differences, opened his own shop in Maria Enzersdorf in 1937 . In 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and worked as a driver and paramedic in France and on the Eastern Front . After escaping from captivity, he returned to Vienna and built a residential and commercial building from a bomb ruin in Maria Enzersdorf, where he continued his profession. At the age of 67 he retired, initially moved to the vicinity of St. Pölten , but later returned to Brunn am Gebirge near his children and grandchildren and died there in 1997 at the age of 94.

In 1919 he was a co-founder and striker of the soccer club SC Siebenhirten and a member of several weight training clubs in the south of Vienna. As a butcher used to heavy work, especially with the handling of weighty beef and pork halves, it made sense to go lifting. With a height of 164 cm he competed in the lightweight (up to 67.5 kg). At that time there was hardly any training, the athletes had enough raw strength due to their professions - (often butchers, iron benders, barn diggers , etc.). Muscle building with medication , even massages or sauna visits were not common back then.

In the first half of the 20th century, Vienna had the reputation of being the “city of strong men”, which a glance at a roll of honor from the Austrian Weightlifting Association shows, where 32 world champions, four Olympic champions, 28 European champions and many other medalists are listed. In 1919 he played for the first time abroad at the German Fighting Games in Berlin , where he was third in the lightweight.

In 1923 at the World Championships in Vienna he was able to bring 360 kg to the high distance in a four-way fight and win the lightweight title. The four-way battle that was customary at the time consisted of two-armed tearing, two-armed pushing and the now canceled disciplines of one-armed and two-armed pushing - real acts of strength, whereby less technique than pure power was required. At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 , he could not repeat his performance from the World Cup of the previous year. Although he set a new world record for middleweight in two-armed presses with 97.5 kg, he suffered a total failure in one of the other three disciplines (none of the three permitted attempts were valid), which is why he does not appear in the ranking of the Olympic competition. He was able to improve this world record up to 105 kg at the following championships. Several championships, such as the CSR championship in 1926, followed.

In the winter of 1932 he had a car accident with the truck on a snowy road, in which the left arm was smashed. The famous surgeon Lorenz Böhler transplanted part of the bone of the shin into his forearm, which prevented amputation . After recovering, he went back to work with some disability and continued to run the business until 1969.