Eugen Sandow and eugenics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Eugen Sandow gained renown in fin de siecle Britain as a strongman and bodybuilder and in the early twentieth century as a publicist, entrepreneur, and crusader for physical fitness on the international scene. Much less is known about his underlying zeal for eugenics, a movement that coincided with Social Darwinism as an evolutionary theory and practice that culminated during his most productive years. A pioneer in the burgeoning field of physical culture, Sandow sought to use his celebrity status to propagate his universal health doctrine as a means to address widespread public concerns about degeneration or suicide of the race. What made Sandow’s system unique was his neo-Lamarckian belief that acquired characteristics of health and fitness could be transmitted to the next generation of humanity by physical training. Fuelled by ongoing recruitment crises in the South African War and World War I, it was an ulterior agenda of environmental eugenics that Sandow promoted not only through public and official channels but to the four corners of the earth. Ultimately his utopian vision could not be sustained by the 1920s either through science, public opinion, or by political efforts to reconstruct a society fit for heroes.