Siegmund Klein

10 April 1902 – 24 May 1987 · Toruń (Thorn) → New York City

Siegmund "Sig" Klein was a German-American strongman, physique pioneer and gym owner. He took over Professor Attila's New York studio after Attila's death, married his daughter Grace, and for nearly half a century ran his own small gymnasium in Manhattan, one of the best-known in the country.

Origins

Klein was born on 10 April 1902 in Thorn (Toruń), then in Germany and now in Poland, and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, a year later. A reader of the strength magazines, he began training at twelve with improvised window sash weights, and by seventeen was using a standard 100 lb barbell set.

The work

In 1924 Klein came to New York and took over the running of Attila's Athletic Studio at 1383 Broadway, following Attila's death in March that year. He married Attila's daughter Grace; Wikipedia gives the date as 25 January 1927. In July 1926 he arranged for Tony Sansone to carry on Attila's gym and opened his own Physical Culture Studio at 207 West 48th Street, at the corner of Seventh Avenue (717 Seventh Avenue). Only about 30 by 40 feet, it became one of the most famous gyms in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and many photo shoots for Joe Weider's magazines were done there. The gym closed for the first time in November 1968, so that Klein could attend Bob Hoffman's seventieth birthday party, and closed for good around 1974, after 48 years.

Klein published his own magazine, Klein's Bell, from June 1931 to December 1932, when it merged into Hoffman's new Strength & Health, for which he then wrote. He appeared on the covers of Strength & Health, Iron Man, Macfadden's Physical Culture and Desbonnet's La Culture Physique.

Notable feats

At a bodyweight of about 147–150 lb, Klein is credited with:

• Strict military press of 229¼ lb, and a press behind the neck of 206 lb.
• Bent press of 209 lb and side press of 174 lb.
• One-arm snatch of 160 lb and one-arm clean and jerk of 190½ lb.
• Alternate dumbbell press with two 100 lb dumbbells for ten repetitions.
• Crucifix of 126¾ lb in total.

Method

Klein valued shape as well as strength; Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding names him as a pioneer in treating the physique, not strength alone, as evidence of health. He believed that once a lifter was in good condition, little training was needed to keep it: writing in 1969, he said his last heavy lifting had been at 35, and that he had trained three times a week for about an hour ever since.

Legacy

Klein's gym linked the music-hall era — through Attila, who had taught Sandow — with post-war American bodybuilding. A surprise party for his eightieth birthday in 1982, organised by Vic Boff, Leo Murdock and others, grew into the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen, which honours early champions and preserves the history of the iron game. Klein died of cancer in New York in May 1987, aged 85, survived by his wife and a daughter. He was inducted into the IFBB Hall of Fame in 2006.

Disputed and unresolved

The sequence of events between 1924 and 1927 — the takeover of Attila's studio, his marriage to Grace, and the opening of his own gym — is told differently in different sources. His lifts come from his own and later physical-culture accounts rather than official contest records.