Karl Swoboda

20 July 1882 – 19 April 1933 · Vienna

Karl Swoboda was one of the Viennese heavyweights — with Josef Steinbach, Josef Grafl, Wilhelm Türk and Berthold Tandler — who set the standard in world heavyweight lifting between 1900 and 1914. He won two world titles in 1911 and held the world record in the two-hands jerk.

Origins

Swoboda was born on 20 July 1882 in Ottakring, then a suburb and now a district of Vienna. His parents moved to Inzersdorf, where they took over the municipal inn, and he worked as a journeyman butcher.

The work

Swoboda's speciality was the two-hands jerk after a continental (non-strict) clean. Between September 1909 and November 1911 he set eight world records in the lift, all in Vienna, rising from 175.5 kg to 185.6 kg (about 409 lb) on 4 November 1911 — a record reported still to be standing in 1950. In 1912 in Vienna he jerked 200 kg after the bar had been brought to his shoulders with help.

At the world championships he was second to Grafl in Vienna in 1909 and 1910, and in 1911 won both championships held that year, in Berlin and in Vienna. In 1919, in Munich, he still pressed 120 kg and jerked 160 kg with two hands, but after failing to place in the top three at the 1920 world championships in Vienna he retired.

Notable feats

• World heavyweight champion twice, 1911 (Berlin and Vienna).
• World record in the two-hands jerk, eight times between 1909 and 1911, the last at 185.6 kg.
• 200 kg jerked in 1912, after an assisted clean.

Legacy

Like several of his fellow lifters, Swoboda kept an inn in Vienna. He died in Vienna on 19 April 1933 and was buried in an honorary grave in the Hernals cemetery; the headstone wrongly gives 24 March 1933. In May 1933 friends founded a "Weltmeister-Karl-Swoboda-Runde" in his memory, with his brother-in-law and former rival Berthold Tandler as its first president.

Disputed and unresolved

Results and records from the pre-1914 championships come from contemporary German-language reports and later federation histories rather than a single official register, and several championships were held in the same year under different organisers, so title counts for the period vary between sources.