1. Siegmund Breitbart, known popularly as Zishe or Sische Breitbart, was a Polish-born circus performer, vaudeville strongman and Jewish folklore hero.
12 Facts About Zishe Breitbart
1. 2.
Zishe Breitbart was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" and Eisenkonig during the 1920s.
3.
Zishe Breitbart performed extensively in Europe and America touring with the Circus Busch using a strength act themed to fit his former background as a blacksmith.
4.
Zishe Breitbart lifted a baby elephant, and while holding on to the elephant, he climbed a ladder and held a locomotive wheel by rope in his teeth while three men were suspended from the wheel.
5.
Zishe Breitbart took one of the most popular feats among the strongmen of the era and made it part of his act.
6.
Zishe Breitbart starred in the 1923 film The Iron King.
7.
Zishe Breitbart died eight weeks after he accidentally injured himself during a strongman demonstration in Radom, Poland.
8.
Zishe Breitbart stabbed himself in the knee with a spike he drove through five 1-inch-thick oak boards using only his bare hands.
9.
Zishe Breitbart was buried in the Adass-Jisroel cemetery in Berlin.
10.
Zishe Breitbart was played by Finnish strongman Jouko Ahola in a highly fictionalized account of his life in Werner Herzog's 2001 film Invincible.
11.
Zishe Breitbart was the inspiration for the children's book Zishe the Strongman by Robert Rubenstein, from Kar-Ben Publishing.
12.
The Reform Judaism Magazine have credited Zishe Breitbart, who was billed during his 1923 American tour as "the Superman of the Ages," with inspiring Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel to create the iconic superhero Superman, although Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster never said anything about his influence.