Georg Hackenschmidt

[Eric]

In my spoof article about the most illustrious author Darren Pretzel elsewhere, I mentioned, towards the end, the wrestler-philosopher Georg Hackenschmidt, who was, unlike dear Darren, a real-life figure.

There are various things on the net about this unlikely "a sound mind in a sound body" type of man, including this one:

Georg Hackenschmidt

His fate, being called the Russian Lion demonstrates once again how powerful nations borrow successful people from smaller ones and praise them as their own. Because Hackenschmidt was Estonian, albeit a German-speaking one. He is called George Hackenschmidt in the English-speaking countries, and was, in fact, buried in London.

[Irene Wilde]

A link to the Pretzel article, please? There are so many elsewheres and I have a dreadful sense of direction.

[Irene Wilde]

Never mind, I found it. Coffee must not be very strong this morning.

[Eric]

Sorry, Irene, it's a damned nuisance, but I can't find the Pretzel, that is to say it's in the tin where I left it, but the link, the link... Can't find it. Tried Google. Nothing. Intriguing that Darren and Joshua are in fact cousins. Joshua sounds a bit Jewish to me, like Pretzel, for that matter, but Darren, like Jason and Brian, is a truly aristocratic, old gentry name stemming from the Shires of England...

Hackenschmidt wrote the following books or booklets:

Hackenschmidt went on to write several books, including Fitness and Your Self (1937), Consciousness and Character: True Definitions of Entity, Individuality, Personality, Nonentity (1937), The Way To Live In Health and Physical Fitness (1941), and The Three Memories and Forgetfulness: What They Are and What Their True Significance is in Human Life.

I think I first came across Hackenschmidt and his unlikely life when I was translating the novel "Treading Air" by Jaan Kross and was compiling the long list of names at the back of the book, which included Lurich, another Estonian wrestler, who is mentioned in that novel.

[Irene Wilde]

Just the name Hackenschmidt is going to have me smiling all day. I wonder what Mr. Hackenschmidt would think of the modern version of his sport, or if it was much the same in his day.

[Eric]

He obviously knew the comic value of his surname, as the Wiki says:

Hackenschmidt was also a pioneer in the field of weightlifting. He invented the exercise known as the hack squat, whose name is a reference to his own.

I suppose the sports journalists who wrote about him were all hacks too... But the name Lurich is weird too, like lurid.

Wiki entry:

Georg Hackenschmidt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Robert Drane]

Australian readers will find an article about this amazing man in this month's Inside Sport (November 2008 - out mid Oct). What a life he led!

[Eric]

I never expected another posting about the one and only George Hackenschmidt. And some people will wonder: why Australia? The answer is simple. There are a lot of the children and grandchildren of Estonian exiles living in that country. And once in a while they will find something from the Old Country that is of general interest.

Here's another article about him:

Pioneers of Strength: George Karl Julius Hackenschmidt | Flex | Find Articles at BNET

He evidently spent a few months in Aussie in 1904.