Kati Sandwina: “Hercules Can be a Lady” – Iron Game History – December, 2005

Few women of strength have attained the fame of Catherine (Kati) Brumbach Heymann. Known to the public as “Sandwina,” a distaff derivative of “Sandow,” Jan Todd describes her as one of the “super-stars” of professional strongwomen in an essay entitled “Bring on the Amazons.” Kati was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1884, one of the sixteen children of Phillipe and Johanna Brumbach, and began performing in the family-run circus at age two. As a teenager she was taking on all challengers in wrestling, her father offering a handsome prize to anyone who could defeat her. Gracefully proportioned at six feet and a little over two hundred pounds, Kati eventually earned the reputation, as a touring performer, of “Europe’s Queen of Strength, Beauty and Dexterity.”