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Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. Benjamin Disraeli |
Siegmund Breitbart , also known popularly as Zishe or Sische Breitbart , was a Polish-born circus performer, vaudeville strongman and Jewish folklore hero. He was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" and Eisenkönig ("The Ironking") during the 1920s.
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Breitbart was born into an Observant Jewish (the concept of "Orthodox" being a more modern descriptive conception of a ritually observant Jew) family of blacksmiths near Łódź, on February 22, 1883. He traveled and performed extensively in Europe and America, touring with the Circus Busch, arguably the largest circus in the world at the time. He gained American citizenship in 1923.
Breitbart became a legend and took on the proportions of a national hero in Europe and America, only to die at the age of 42. In a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five oak boards resting on one of his knees using only his bare hands, his knee was accidentally pierced. The wound became infected, which led to fatal blood poisoning. Both legs were amputated in an effort to stem the infection, but the operation failed to help him. Breitbart succumbed after eight weeks. He is buried in a cemetery in Berlin.
Breitbart's strength acts were themed to fit his background as a blacksmith. He bent iron bars around his arm in floral patterns, bit through iron chains or tore them apart. He could also break a horseshoe in half, hold back two horses who were whipped, pull a wagon-load of people with his teeth or support enormous weight, such as an automobile loaded with up to 10 passengers, while lying on his back. One of the popular feats among the strongmen of the era was called the Tomb of Hercules, and Breitbart made it a part of his act: a bridge was built across his chest and heavy animals (bulls, an elephant, etc.) paraded over it. He took it a step further, supporting a moto-dome in which two men chased each other on motorcycles on his chest. Three tombstones were placed on his chest while two men hammered away with sledgehammers. He lifted a baby elephant, and while holding on to the elephant, he climbed a ladder and held a locomotive wheel by rope in his teeth while three men were suspended from the wheel.
Seizing on the mail-order muscle development course craze of the time, Breitbart authored a book titled Muscular Power and the Breitbart mail-order course. The course was based around body-weight exercises and a special "Breitbart Apparatus", a progressive resistance exerciser made to simulate steel bending movements.
His life was fictionalized as Zishe Breitbart in Werner Herzog's 2001 film Invincible. Breitbart's part was played by legendary Finnish strongman Jouko Ahola.
His life was also the inspiration for the children's book Zishe the Strongman by Robert Rubenstein, from Kar-Ben Publishing.
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