Josef Steinbach

21 March 1879 – 15 January 1937 · Horschau, Bohemia → Vienna

Josef Steinbach was the leading Austrian heavyweight lifter of the early 1900s: world champion in 1904 and 1905, gold and silver medallist at the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, and afterwards a professional lifter and wrestler in Vienna.

Origins

Steinbach was born on 21 March 1879 in Horschau (Horšov), in Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary. He moved to Vienna in 1894 and began competing in weightlifting in 1898, lifting for the I. Erdberger Athleten-Klub. Desbonnet, writing in 1911, describes him as a sun-tanned man about 1.80 m tall; modern reference works give 177 cm and 114 kg.

The work

He won world titles at Vienna in 1904 and at Berlin and Duisburg in 1905, when more than one world championship was held. At the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens he won the one-hand lift and took silver in the two-hands lift, and also pulled for Austria's tug-of-war team, which finished fourth. Desbonnet recalls his "famous rivalry" there with the Greek Dimitrios Tofalos.

After the Games he turned professional as a wrestler and exhibition lifter. In 1910 he repeatedly challenged Arthur Saxon for the world professional weightlifting title, without success. In 1924 he appeared in the silent film Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews).

Notable feats

• World champion, 1904 (Vienna) and 1905 (Berlin and Duisburg).
• 1906 Athens: gold in the one-hand lift, silver in the two-hands lift.
• A one-hand lift of 106 kg that remained a world record until the 1930s.
• Desbonnet credits him with 17 German records under the looser German rules of the time, including a two-hands jerk of 175 kg after a clean in several movements.

Legacy

Steinbach died in Vienna on 15 January 1937, survived by his son Leopold. In the same year Austrian and German lifters and wrestlers paid for a large granite monument in his honour.

Disputed and unresolved

Desbonnet gives his birthplace as Vienna and his birth year as about 1880; Austrian reference works give Horschau, 1879. Wikidata lists 5 January as an alternative date of death. Early world-championship counts vary between sources because several rival "world" contests were held in the same years.