Katie Sandwina, the World’s Strongest Woman
When most people think of 19th and early 20th-century fitness freaks and performers of feats of strength, the image that comes to mind is usually a leotard-wearing broad-chested figure with handlebar mustaches. However, the fitness movement back then was actually an all-encompassing movement, that did not exclude based on gender. An example was Katie Sandwina (1884 – 1952), otherwise known as the “Lady Hercules”. She was quite the powerhouse and an impressive performer who became a world-famous circus strongwoman.
Born just outside of Vienna, Austria, in 1884, Katarina Brumbach – her birth name – came into the world on the back of a circus wagon. Her parents were circus performers from Bavaria, and Katie was destined to follow in their footsteps. Her father stood 6 foot 6, and weighed about 270 pounds – a big man for those days. Her mother, at nearly 6 feet tall and with biceps measuring 16 inches, was a circus strongwoman herself. In other words, strength was in Katie’s blood.
As a teenager, Katie stood nearly 6 feet tall, and weighed a lean 200 pounds. That size and the strength that went with it, combined with her natural good looks, made her an attraction wherever she went. At circus stops, Katie performed feats of strength with dumbbells and barbells, and her father would offer 100 marks to any woman – or man – who could best her in a wrestling match. Her father never had to pay out. Katie had multiple children, but pregnancy hardly ever slowed her down: she performed her strongwoman act almost until she went into labor.
Katie eventually emigrated to the US, where she was signed up by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and spent decades as their featured strongwoman, until she was almost 60. Her greatest moment came when she defeated the era’s most famous strongman, Eugene Sandow, in a weightlifting contest. She managed to lift 300 pounds above her head, while he was able to leave them only to his chest.
One of the things that contemporaries found highly interesting about her was just how feminine she was, and those who knew her frequently remarked on how she was into makeup, getting her nails done up, and other “super girly things”. It was seen as an entertaining juxtaposition for a woman who routinely had a carousel placed on her shoulders, so she could lift anywhere from eight to a dozen people at a time.
