The Man Who Wrestled with Memory
Vilius Dranseika (Jagiellonian University)
The protagonist of this story is not the only thinker to take seriously the harms of remembering and the benefits of forgetting. Yet no one has pushed this idea to its limits as he did.
There have been other assaults on memory, but they were surgical strikes rather than all-out war. Take Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love), written more than two millennia ago. It contains advice—much of it still relevant today—on weakening the hold of painful memories of lost love. Similarly, recent research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has explored various methods—both pharmacological and non—to dull the emotional sting of distressing memories, or even erase them entirely.
Some have also sought to strike a balance between remembering and forgetting. Forgetting can liberate us—both as individuals and as societies—from the weight of the past, allowing us to live more fully in the present. Letting go of old ways can unleash creativity and imagination. Forgetting is also essential to learning—it enables us to filter out the irrelevant and focus on what matters. Forgetting can play a role in breaking the endless cycle of grievances, paving the way for reconciliation.
Many thinkers have explored these themes, including Henri Bergson, Paul Ricœur, and—most notably—Friedrich Nietzsche. Yet, in each case, they target an excess of memory, not memory itself.
Enter George Hackenschmidt.
Born in Tartu, Estonia, in 1877, he enjoyed an illustrious career in weightlifting and wrestling around the turn of the twentieth century, including becoming “professional wrestling's first world heavyweight champion.” Over the the course of his career, he amassed considerable fortune and international fame.
In in 1932—decades after his sports career ended abruptly due to an injury in 1911—Hackenschmidt published the first of his eight philosophical books—a volume in German titled Entthronung des Hirns (Dethronement of Brain).
He was not happy with the result. As Hackenschmidt wrote in 1959 in a letter to Estonian historian of sport Olaf Langsepp, he ensured that all but six copies of the book were pulped. Between 1935 and 1937, he published another seven books in English. Among them is The Three Memories and Forgetfulness (1937), which contains his most focused account of memory and forgetting.
Let me attempt to summarize some of the main ideas of this book.
One of the central distinctions in Hackenschmidt’s theory is that between the internal tendencies of a human organism—what he calls instinct or life-power—and various external influences. These external factors range from the kinds of nutrients that enter our bodies, to the physical tools we use, to the systems of knowledge and belief that shape us.
Memories, then, are ways in which human organisms undergo modifications that compensate for these reccuring external influences. For instance, using a tool—the spade is a central example in this book—results in material patterns in the human muscles, shaped in response to the tool’s design and the way it is used. What one gains is a specific limb-memory.
Limb-memories are one of the “three memories” mentioned in the book title. The other two are cell-memories and brain-memories.
For Hackenschmidt, “memories are an alien factor in human life” (p. 143); they are “something imposed upon us,” something “we acquire to meet conditions which are alien to our natural selves” (p. 15). Here, the distinction between internal tendencies and external influences comes into view.
Forgetting, on the other hand, comes to us naturally. “The constant flow” of life-power is always “towards the breaking down and erasing [of] memories” (p. 143). As a sportsman, he was acutely aware of how gains dissipate after one stops training.
Hackenschmidt’s main concern with memory is that it distances us from our intrinsic tendencies, forcing us to act based on past experiences—or even the experiences of other people with very different needs, wants, and circumstances—rather than respond to the present moment. This concern also lay at the core of his thinking about physical training: routinized regimes may help one excel at narrowly defined tasks, but only at the expense of flexible and spontaneous responses to ever-changing circumstances.
He acknowledges that memory can provide an accurate record of past events but argues that this accuracy is irrelevant to the present. The past conditions under which those memories were formed no longer exist, making them unreliable guides for present and future action. To follow memory is to act under the influence of outdated circumstances, creating a dissonance between one’s life-power and reality.
For Hackenschmidt, to be most fully human, one must be free of memories. Only then can a person respond to the environment in which their life must be lived without the distortions imposed by past experience.
We get a glimpse of this attitude in the following recollection by Hackenschmidt of a conversation with Bernard Shaw, taken from an autobiographical fragment stored at the Estonian Sports and Olympic Museum in Tartu: “Just as in my wrestling matches, I entered the conversation without a plan, leaving my sayings and replies to whatever happened to be discussed or explained.”
A life lived entirely without memories—something Hackenschmidt considers possible, though perhaps not yet achieved by anyone—would be radically different from our typical lives. It would involve spontaneous interaction with one’s environment, without a sense of time or space, with every situation experienced as entirely new. This is because ideas of space and time as well as the very capacities for thought and categorization presuppose memory. On the other hand—and here Hackenschmidt tries to make the idea less alien—it would be much like breathing: an act we’re typically unaware of.
There is also a political element to Hackenschmidt’s philosophy: it is radically individualistic. He is deeply suspicious of all systems of ideas—be they religious, political, or scientific. When benign, they consolidate human weakness by substituting an artificial environment for a natural one. When dictatorial, they override all individual and personal interests. Either way, such conditions impede the expression of an individual’s life-power.
Furthermore, Hackenschmidt has a lot to say about the biological mechanisms involved in the creation of memories—which encompass what he calls ‘awareness of inferiority,’ ‘sensitisation to a rhythm,’ and ‘channelisation.’ But I will leave these details aside, along with his attempts to answer questions such as “Why are some things easier to remember?” and “Why do childhood memories resurface in old age?”
Hackenschmidt’s philosophy—and his philosophy of memory and forgetting in particular—remains largely unknown. While some interesting remarks can be found in a 1992 paper, “Muscles, Memory: and George Hackenschmidt,” by Terry Todd and Spencer Maxcy, as well as in Broderick Chow’s 2024 book Muscle Works, there have so far been no major attempts to evaluate it in its historical and intellectual context.
The lack of secondary literature is not the only obstacle facing someone who wishes to learn more about Hackenschmidt’s philosophy. His philosophical books are also quite difficult to obtain, with only a few copies scattered across various libraries. In addition, his writings make few, if any, explicit connections to external literatures, making it very difficult to trace influences and potential novelty.
His language does, however, make it clear that he was influenced by the vitalist ideas of his time. In an autobiographical fragment, he mentions meeting Hans Driesch, who seemed sympathetic to his ideas. His wife Rachel also writes, in a 1968 letter to Langsepp, that Hackenschmidt was familiar with Nietzsche’s philosophy and that “about 50 years ago” he thought “Nietzsche was near the true [sic].”
Furthermore, it is not entirely clear when his published views were developed. He began to formulate his philosophical system while forcefully interned in Germany during World War I as a foreign national. However, it remains unclear to what extent his views evolved in the period leading up to their publication in the 1930s.
That said, perhaps it is only fitting that the philosopher who wrestled with memory remains almost entirely forgotten.
It is a fascinating character and an exciting topic. Thank you for the story about Hackenschmidt. I have also been interested in this topic for a long time. I even wrote a short article for the Ukrainian Encyclopedia, "Memory and Forgetting." My memory also preserves a trip to Tartu that winter, Wolfgang Künne's seminar on the theoretical philosophy of G. Frege. I remember having a terrible cold before the trip, and it was too late to cancel. It was an excellent seminar, where we met and talked about our mutual friends. These are the thoughts and memories revealed by your story.