Professor Attila

2 July 1844 – 15 March 1924 · Karlsruhe, Baden → New York City

Ludwig (Louis) Durlacher — performing and teaching as Professor Attila — was a stage strongman turned trainer. He taught the young Eugen Sandow in Brussels, ran gymnasiums in Brussels and London, and from 1893 until his death kept Attila's Athletic Studio in New York, one of the first studios of its kind for the wealthy and famous.

Origins

Durlacher was born in Karlsruhe, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on 2 July 1844. As a young man he apprenticed himself to the Italian strongman Felice Napoli, from whom he learnt staging and presentation, and he began performing as Attila in 1863. He toured the European halls, including the Folies Bergère in Paris and the Alhambra in London. Desbonnet, in Les Rois de la force, remembered him as an artist more than a heavy lifter: a well-presented act built on skill and effect, with apparatus that was "rather light".

The work

By his own account and the clippings in his scrapbook, Attila trained members of several European royal families, among them the Prince of Wales, and wealthy clients such as Cornelius Vanderbilt. In about 1886–87 he cut back his performing and opened a private gymnasium in Brussels, where he met Friedrich Müller, the future Sandow. Attila trained him, taught him how to present a strength and physique act, and performed with him across Europe between about 1887 and 1889.

In 1889 Attila opened a modest gymnasium in Bloomsbury, London. He encouraged Sandow's trip to London that year and helped him prepare for the challenge to the strongman Charles Sampson, which Sandow won at the Royal Aquarium on 2 November 1889 (see Feats). The two then performed together at the Alhambra before parting; their relations later became bitter, though they appear to have been reconciled in part.

Attila arrived in New York on 18 August 1893, sailing from Brazil. He first taught at 248 East Twenty-third Street and by 1898 had moved Attila's Athletic Studio and School of Physical Culture to 1383 Broadway, at Thirty-seventh Street, where it stayed until his death. Members included J. P. Morgan Jr., Alfred Vanderbilt, Florenz Ziegfeld, John Philip Sousa and the heavyweight champion James J. Corbett, whom Attila helped prepare in 1893–94. Visiting strongmen such as Louis Cyr and Warren Lincoln Travis called there. He also opened branches in Chicago (1908) and Detroit (by 1912), and was an early advocate of weight training for women.

Contributions and claims

• David Webster credits him with inventing the bent press (the "screw press") and the human-bridge stunt; some authors also credit him with the Roman chair and the shot-loaded globe barbell. None of these attributions can be firmly proved.
• Training Sandow, and later naming his first daughter Louise Sandowa.
• The studio model: private instruction for wealthy clients, with equipment and stage contacts, in an elegant setting rather than a bare gymnasium.

Legacy

Attila died in New York on 15 March 1924, aged 79; his widow, Roseanna, died in 1961. Siegmund Klein, who arrived in New York in 1924, took over the studio after Attila's death and later married his daughter Grace. Through Klein, Attila's teaching line runs on into mid-century American lifting. Kim Beckwith and Jan Todd's 2002 reassessment in Iron Game History argues that as a trainer his influence on American strength training may rival Sandow's.

Disputed and unresolved

The claim that Attila invented the bent press is repeated in older sources but cannot be proved. The date of his first meeting with Sandow is variously given as 1886 or 1887. His client lists of royalty and society figures come largely from his own scrapbook and publicity.