Finding Lost Voices: Remembering the Great Sandwina (1884- 1952) - "I am not a freak of nature. Instead, I just live the most natural life."
A weekly email that brings back the voices of those who have been forgotten or misremembered.
What does it mean to be strong? As a woman in American culture today, this is a difficult question to answer. Even in 2024, our society tells women it’s okay to be strong on the inside. She’s a strong woman, which means you are a woman who can deal with all the hardships that life will throw at you as you live in this world. Our culture eats that up and echoes Oprah-branded responses like, “You go, girl!” But, strong, strong? Big bulging biceps, ripped abs, and thick legs on a woman, strong? That isn’t something that is often admired in our society. It never fails; whenever an athletic woman is featured on T.V. or a social media post, she is almost always mocked for her body. Scroll through the comments, and you’ll always find some troll condemning her with barbs, like, “She looks like a man.” Or, “steroids, anyone?” Or “Good luck getting a date!” Somehow the idea that a woman could be naturally strong is unbelievable to so many. But why? Why can’t we accept a woman who is strong on the inside and out? A woman who has a powerful body.
This topic is important to me because I’m considering writing about the history of muscular women as it has been perceived in America, both through the perspective of history and through the lens of my own experience as a female athlete. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in the muscled body of a competitive swimmer, and because of this, I spent most of my life ashamed of my body. It’s only in the last decade, after injuries from a terrible accident I suffered years ago came back to haunt me, leaving me temporarily disabled and having to fight my way back to essential mobility, that I found the CrossFit community and began to embrace my body's muscular power.
My future book aims to dispel the myths that strong women are abnormal and that they are a relatively new phenomenon—and over the next few months, I plan on bringing back some of the women from the early history of vaudeville strong women like today’s Lost Voice: The Great Sandwina (1884- 1952).
So who was The Great Sandwina? She was born Katie Brumbach (1884- 1952) into an Austrian-American circus family (allegedly in the back of a circus wagon near Vienna). Her parents were the strongman/woman couple, Philippe and Johanna Brumbach, both descendants of circus performers. Her father stood 6’6” tall and weighed 260 pounds. In the 1890s, he could supposedly lift over 500 pounds with a single finger and was considered one of the strongest men in Germany. Her mother, Johanna, was equally strong. She was over six feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds.
When Katie was two, her father began including her in his circus act. She started lifting light dumbbells and doing handstands on her father’s arm. As early as age five, she began exercising. According to scholar Jan Todd, by age fourteen, “she began more systematic training in tumbling, artistic dance, apparatus work, and light and heavy dumbbell work.” Her body bloomed with muscles, and she was celebrated for it. When she was a teenager, her father had given her a solo act. During shows, as she performed her weightlifting feats, her father would challenge any man in the audience if he thought he could defeat his young daughter in wrestling. No man ever beat her. Professor August Schwore saw her at her father’s circus and knew he had seen a star. He immediately began to train her in weight-lifting. Fifteen months later, she broke two German weightlifting records.
At age eighteen, Brumbach stood over six feet tall and weighed 210 pounds. She was ripped and ready to take on a worthy opponent. Her journey took her to New York City, where she was set to compete in a weightlifting contest against the famous German strongman Eugen Sandow. The stage was set, the tension palpable. During the contest, Brumback, a force to be reckoned with, could lift 300 pounds over her head. Sandow, a renowned strongman, could only lift the same amount to his chest. It was a victory that would shape her future. After this triumph, she adopted the name “Sandwina” (a feminine derivative of Sandow).
Sandwina married Max Heymann (a former acrobat who had been one of the men who’d challenged her to a wrestling match back at her father’s circus), and the couple performed across Europe eventually getting discovered during a performance in Paris by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In the beginning, when she came to America to perform as part of Ringling and Bros., she was just one of many acts that performed simultaneously, and then in 1911, the circus decided to bring Sandwina into the spotlight.
What’s interesting is how she was marketed to the public. A public that was not used to seeing a woman who was celebrated for how strong she was. To introduce her as their new star, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus set up a special press event in April 1911 at Madison Square Garden where a dozen physicians examined Sandwina in front of a crowd of reporters. Afterward, Sandwina did an impromptu show where she lifted her husband Max overhead several times with one hand, and then, while holding him aloft, lowered herself to the ground and rose again to a standing position. For her finale, she lifted Max and her massive son, Teddy, supporting their more than 200 pounds of total weight with only one arm. According to Dr. Peter Anderson, the conclusion was “In every way, according to her measurements, she is a perfect woman by all the accepted standards.” Great care was taken by Ringling Bros. to market Sandwina as having muscles you couldn’t see. As being curvy rather than muscular. And the press ate it up. Across the county, articles were soon being written that drew attention to Sandwina’s act.
One example of these articles was published on Sunday, June 4, 1911, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The journalist Marguerite Martyn wrote a tribute to the strong woman after seeing her perform her act, where she described her grace, elegance, and incredible strength.
“If we were all as powerful as Sandwina, what would happen to the masculine idea of the “stronger sex”? That would be an antidote to the ancient, very tiresome claim of the anti-suffragists that women have no right to vote because they could not defend themselves, serve in the army, join the police force, and all that.
If physical strength is to decide supremacy in our government, here is Sandwina, stronger than the average man, be he voter or otherwise.” — “"America Is No Place for Babies," Says the Lady Hercules” by Marguerite Martyn
Later in the same article, when asked how others might emulate her health and fitness Sandwina answered that they can if they
“live as I do. …I am not a freak of nature. Instead, I just live the most natural life as did my ancestors before me. We eat much good food, plenty vegetables, plenty fruit, not so much meat except when it is boiled with vegetables. I use always butter instead of lard or oil, and I season meat or vegetables with salt or pepper before I cook, not after the food is done. That is just my way. And I cook everything a long time.” — “"America Is No Place for Babies," Says the Lady Hercules”
Sandwina would go on to perform in the circus for the rest of her life (she was even a part of the WPA circus in the 1930s). After she retired in the 1940s, she and her husband ran a tavern in Queens, New York. She died in 1952. There is much work to do to discover more about Sandwina’s life.
While Sandwina was accepted by the public for her strength, it was only because she was able to beat the system. The muscles she had spent her life working for, which gave her the power to lift hundreds of pounds overhead, were glossed over as “curves’. Great pains were taken to market her as a “natural” woman because otherwise, she likely would have been thought to be a freak of nature. Learning more about her has been fascinating for me, and I look forward to discovering more about her and the strong women I will be researching. If you liked learning more about Sandwina and are curious about the history of strong women in America, please let me know! I’d love to hear from you.
Now Available for pre-order: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
Called, "heartbreaking and heroic." by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.
Now Available for pre-order: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
Called, "heartbreaking and heroic." by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan
Iris - Thank you so much for this piece. It was fascinating go read about this woman and to consider all the expectations dumped on girls to look and act a certain way. I'm looking forward to reading more about other physically strong women. Thank you for all your work shining lights on forgotten women
Iris, this is a fascinating story! I’m curious to know where the bar was in Queens. Your book idea sounds fantastic. Keep us posted!