Eugene Sandow, born in 1867, quickly rose to fame as the first well-known bodybuilder and the founder of contemporary bodybuilding."Sandow himself made a reputation for himself in Europe as a professional strongman by outdoing all other strongmen.
Eugene Sandow
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Born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller
2 April 1867
Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
Died 14 October 1925 (aged 58)
Kensington, London, England
Resting place Putney Vale Cemetery
Other names Eugene Sandow
Height 175 cm (5 ft 9 in)
Spouse Blanche Brooks (m. 1896).
Children 2
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Early Life
On April 2, 1867, in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad), Sandow was born into a Jewish family. His mother was of Russian ancestry, while his father was German. Despite the fact that his parents were raised Jewish, they wanted him to become a Lutheran preacher because they were Lutherans. In order to evade military service, he fled Prussia in 1885. He then went throughout Europe as a circus performer under the stage name Eugen Sandow, which he adopted after adapting and Germanizing his Russian mother's maiden name, Sandov.
He went to Ludwig Durlacher's gym in Brussels, who goes by the alias "Professor Attila" and is a fellow strongman. Sandow's talent was identified by Durlacher, who mentored him and persuaded him to visit London to compete in a strongmen's contest in 1889. Sandow easily defeated the current champion and became famous and well-known for his strength in an instant. He began his career as an athletic superstar as a result. Soon, he was getting calls for concerts from all around Britain. For the following four years, Sandow improved his method and turned it into a form of entertaining the public by posing and performing amazing strength feats.