Siegmund Breitbart
Siegmund Breitbart (born February 22, 1893 in Stryków near Łódź , Congress Poland ; † October 12, 1925 in Berlin ) was a trained wrestler and artist . He became known as The Iron King . His nationality has not yet been clarified.
Life
The devout Jew , who was noticed as a child with his unusual physical strength, was ransomed by a wealthy patroness from the tsarist army and, after a stopover in Berlin, sent on to the USA to be trained as a wrestler. There he also gathered suggestions for his later appearances.
Back in Berlin, he had gladiator armor and a "golden" helmet made and, as The Last Gladiator , steered a quadriga into the ballrooms or arena with fanfare blasts . He amazed the audience by not only breaking horseshoes brought by the spectators, but also forging one himself during his performance - from cold iron and only with the help of his fists . He also dropped large stones on his head and drove thousands of nails into his body.
Breitbart died of blood poisoning at the age of thirty-two after accidentally driving a steel bolt into his knee while performing and then inflaming the wound. He was buried in the Adass-Jisroel-Friedhof in Berlin-Weißensee . His burial created some chaos as this small cemetery was not set up to accommodate the large number of mourners. The funeral of the Iron King was captured for posterity by several camera teams.
Movies
There should have been some film recordings of Breitbart's performances. However, only the silent film The Iron King from 1923 has survived .
A section is also dedicated to him in the social democratic advertising film How the City Hall collects the taxes (silent film from 1923). It is mentioned that the performances of the "Iron King Breitbart" brought the community 1,106 million crowns. Then you can see short excerpts from his performances in gladiator clothing.
In 2002 " Invincible - Unbesiegbar ", a feature film by Werner Herzog, was released . Instead of competition between Breitbart and the conjurer Hanussen who had copied the show of the Iron King in 1924 to show the plot of the film was moved to 1932 to Breitbart as a Jewish hero afterwards the Jewish Nazi sympathizers Hanussen and the emerging Nazi party in To be able to connect. The real Breitbart had been dead for seven years.
The producer of this film is Gary Bart, a great-nephew of the Iron King, who wanted to erect a memorial for his great-uncle and who accompanied this work with the authority of his descendants. Although the film flopped at the box office , some cinematic biographical adjustments have caused a lot of confusion to this day. Not even the place of birth Stryków (source: Gary Bart) is certain, the year of his birth was moved to 1883 by Gary Bart. In contrast, the Friedrichsthal community in which he lived claims that he was born there.
It's entirely possible that his friends called him Sischa (Zisha) (in the movie Zishe ). His Christian and Jewish audience in Berlin knew him as the Iron King , and it was under this name that he went down in the history of Berlin.
literature
- Obituaries in the Berliner Tageblatt and in the artist journal Das Programm , quoted in Alfred Etzold, Joachim Fait, Peter Kirchner, Heinz Knobloch : Die Jewish Friedhöfe in Berlin , Henschel Verlag Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-362-00557-8
- Daniela Gauding: Siegmund Sische Breitbart - iron king, strongest man in the world. Breitbart versus Hanussen , Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938485-22-1
- Sharon Gillerman: Samson in Vienna: the theatrical staging of Jewish masculinity. In: Gisela Dachs (Ed.): Sport. Jewish almanac. Berlin 2011, pp. 42–57, ISBN 978-3-633-54256-7 .
- Sharon Gillerman: Samson. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 315-319.
Web links
- About the dispute between Breitbart and Hanussen (1923/25)
- Discussion of Invincible
- Invincible in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Breitbart, Siegmund |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | The iron king; Breitbart, Sischa; Breitbart, Zishe |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Wrestler and Artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 22, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stryków near Łódź , Poland |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 12, 1925 |
| Place of death | Berlin |