Albert Kramer: A history of the world’s tallest people

On the day of Bernard Coyne’s death on 20 May 1921, a man who went by Jan van Albert was travelling across the American Midwest with a troupe of sideshow performers. He had been making public appearances as the “world’s tallest man” for about a year at this point, but unbeknownst to him, it was now actually true.

Jan van Albert, whose real name was Albert Kramer, stood around 7 ft 9.5 in (228 cm) tall, and held the title of tallest man for more than a decade. He was eventually dethroned by the teenage Robert Wadlow in 1933, but lived for another 43 years.

Early life

Albert Johan Kramer was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on 15 June 1897. According to interviews Albert gave in the 1920s, his father – a basket-maker who was also called Albert – was 5 ft 8 in tall and the rest of his family were equally unremarkable in height. He seems to have had a comfortable middle-class childhood with one brother and four sisters, though his family worried about his health.

Albert's growth was within normal limits until the age of seven months, when he contracted a severe illness that was accompanied by a high fever. After this event, his growth rapidly accelerated, and he was reportedly almost 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall by his seventh birthday. As a result of the practical difficulties this caused, as well as the attention it attracted, Albert was pulled out of school and educated at home.

In his late teens, Albert signed up with the promoter Otto K.E. Heinemann, who had managed Frederick Kempster during his short sideshow career before World War I. Albert toured the European vaudeville circuit, adopting the stage name "Jan van Albert" (in continental Europe) and “Lofty” (in the UK – interestingly a name that had previously been used by Kempster).

Hitting the big time

In 1920, Albert was spotted by the German-American talent agent Ike Rose, who secured him a run of engagements in the USA with impresario Clarence A. Wortham. Wortham's touring company operated the "midway" amusements at many state fairs and exhibitions in mid-west.

This was a more prestigious engagement than it might sound today – in the 1920s, state fairs were massive, days or even weeks-long events that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and generated massive sums of money for their organizers. The advertisements for such events included not only things you might expect to see, such as livestock shows, marching bands and vegetable-growing competitions, but also auto racing, fireworks displays and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

At the 1920 Minnesota State Fair, which ran from 4 to 11 September, “Jan van Albert, nine feet five inches tall, ‘The Biggest Man in the world’” was billed alongside “Ruth Law’s Flying Circus”, “daily games of Auto Polo, America’s most exciting sport” and a “Gigantic Locomotive Collision, featuring two 200,000-pound engines, running at a speed of sixty miles per hour”. (For more information on that last act, and the story of “Head-On” Joe Connolly, see the GWR title for most trains wrecked).

Partnership with Seppetoni

It was around this time that Kramer met his lifelong friend and later business partner, Josef "Seppetoni" Fässler, a Swiss comedian who had hypopituitary dwarfism and stood just 87 cm (2 ft 10 in) tall. The pair developed a successful comedy duo, ensuring that Kramer's career in showbusiness endured after the initial novelty of his size had worn off.

Kramer stayed in the US for almost three years, becoming something of a household name thanks to his continuous touring. He was regularly covered by the press, and was even received at the White House by President Warren G Harding in 1922. He married Dutchwoman Cornelia "Nellie" Hogeveen in Canada in August 1921, and they had a daughter, Elaine Kramer.

Kramer returned to Europe in 1923, and worked the British "Music Hall" (Vaudeville) circuit with Seppetoni for another few years.

In 1926, Kramer divorced Hogeveen, from whom he had been separated for some time, and in June married Seppetoni's younger sister, Wilhelmina "Mina" Fässler, at a private ceremony in Dundee, Scotland. Mina was of around average height, which meant that she towered over her brother but only came up to her husband’s chest. Confusingly, during this time Kramer's promoters also concocted a series of media stories that claimed Kramer was engaged to the Dutch giantess Kaatje van Dijk. It’s not clear if these two even knew each other.

Medical condition

Albert was examined by doctors on at least two occasions during the 1920s, by Dr. August Werner of St Louis, Missouri, in 1922 and by Dr. Otto Schlaginhaufen, a prominent anthropologist in Switzerland in 1923. These two case reports provide a detailed picture of Albert’s health and general condition, but neither could produce a conclusive diagnosis for his underlying condition. Both were agreed, however, that Albert did not have acromegalic gigantism, which was the medical condition borne by most of the men on this list.

An illustration of Albert Kramer

Dr Werner gave Albert’s height as 7 ft 8 in (234 cm) though noting that he was still growing, while Dr Schlaginhaufen omitted these details from his published report on his patient’s request, citing “professional secrecy”. It’s worth mentioning that Albert considered himself to be 8 ft 4 in (254 cm) tall, and that his promoters advertised him as being as much as 9 ft 6 in (289 cm).

His overall health was described as being good, aside from occasional migraines and ulcers on the soles of his feet (a common ailment of the extremely tall, caused by the extreme height differential between the heart and feet, which results in extremely high blood pressure in the lower extremities).

Leaving showbusiness

By the late 1920s, Kramer was beginning to tire of life on the road. He was experiencing near-constant joint pain, particularly in his legs, and had to be hospitalized on several occasions due to infections in the ulcers on his feet.

A snapshot of his life during this period can be glimpsed from the recollections of Iris Easton, a restaurant worker who got to know him during a professional engagement in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. Writing decades later, she described him as a kindly but tired man, going through the motions in his public appearances. She had to prepare a massive banquet – “a giant’s breakfast” – that he posed in front of for the press, but then didn’t have the appetite to do more than pick at.

He was earning good money – one newspaper story from 1926 mentioned that he and Seppetoni were being paid £135 a week for an engagement in Edinburgh (at a time when the average workers' wage was £5 per week) – but constant travel meant uncomfortable compromises that exacerbated his health issues.

Losing his title

In 1933 the 15-year-old Robert Wadlow, whose extraordinary growth had already attracted the attention of the world’s media, grew past 7 ft 10 in. Although he hadn’t yet attained Kramer’s claimed height, it was clear that the still-growing youth would soon far surpass him.

It’s not known how Kramer reacted to this news. It seems that he had already decided to get out of the touring circus world anyway, and he doesn’t seem to have tried to publicly defend his claim to the title.

By the end of the decade, he and Mina were reportedly living in Amsterdam, helping Kramer's father run his basket-making factory. This is where they were when World War II broke out in September 1939. They both survived the German occupation of the Netherlands, though Kramer suffered as a result of the constant shortages of food.

In the late 1940s, Kramer and Seppetoni reunited for a final run of engagements in the UK as part of a touring revue called "Would you Believe It!", but this doesn’t seem to have attracted much interest.

Retirement

In 1949, Kramer bought a riverfront pub in the town of Anna Paulowna, Netherlands, called "De Vlas en Korenbeurs" ("The Flax and Corn Exchange"). Kramer and Mina ran that for several years, and later another pub in Amsterdam, which also served as the informal headquarters of the "Klub Lange Mensen" ("Tall People Club"), a group Kramer founded.

In 1958, the mounting medical complications of his gigantism forced Kramer to retire to a nursing home. He passed away on 4 April 1976 at the age of 78 years 304 days, which makes him the longest-lived person to have ever held the title of "tallest man". His wife Mina passed away in 1979.