Saber vs. Saber
FencingClassics
by JCA
1w ago
Lost and Found: Léon Bertrand’s “Mr. X”! by J. Christoph Amberger They call it “Smalltimore” for a reason: When living in Baltimore, you inevitably run into people you know. The ex-colleague from the publishing company on Mount Vernon Square; the ..read more
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Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
FencingClassics
by JCA
1M ago
When a Fechtmeister met his match at the hand of a farm laborer. —by J. Christoph Amberger When watching someone dig into a plateful of food with enthusiasm, the figure of speech “Fressen wie ein [Scheunen]drescher” inevitably occurs to the ..read more
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“Seen nothing like this in 30 years!”
FencingClassics
by JCA
2M ago
Student Sebastian Kressel plays his prize and holds his own against eight Marxbrüder! —by J. Christoph Amberger There is a small 8-page Gelegenheitsschrift hiding deep in the archives of the Herzog August Library at Wolfenbüttel: Under the Signatur A: 218.12 ..read more
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Here’s looking at you: Marxbrüder and Freifechter von der Feder
FencingClassics
by JCA
3M ago
Eight rare 17th-century portraits of tradesmen and fencing masters! Only half of the gents depicted below have found a second home in the Amberger Collection. Keeping company with Nürnberg citizen and Federfechter Sebastian Heussler above (a printer by trade who ..read more
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Bavarian Max vs. the Italiäner
FencingClassics
by JCA
3M ago
This trick was so good, Eberhard Happel used it twice! (I used the AI rendition of Italy’s Valentina Vezzali biting an Olympic medal in celebration of artificial intelligence, it has nothing to do with Bavarian Max or the Italiäner.) —by ..read more
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All Things Schläger: A cutting-edge reference to terminology
FencingClassics
by JCA
3M ago
When is a Schläger a Schläger? When is it called a Speer? When does pauken not mean pauken? When is a Rapier a foil and when a Rapier? Over the past three centuries, the dueling swords used by the German ..read more
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Where was Fabri when his book was published?
FencingClassics
by JCA
3M ago
Having spent the first six years of the 17th century serving various North German nobles and their Danish cousin, King Christian IV, Padovian fencing master Salvator Fabris reached the end of his term of employment in 1606. His crowning achievement ..read more
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Putting a face with Karl Wassmannsdorff
FencingClassics
by JCA
4M ago
A new view on the Grandfather of HEMA Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Karl Wassmannsdorff (1821-1901—not 1906 as listed on Wiktenauer) needs no introduction to the hard core of HEMA research. A fearless verbal rencontreur (that’s “sparring” to modern HEMA’ists), he left an unmatched body of research into the medieval and early modern German exercitia and Ritterübungen that has withstood the passage of time. Be it just because the depth of his philological knowledge and expertise remains almost unmatched. I feel a special relationship with the man, as I, too, have spent many an hour in fruitless argumen ..read more
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The overly successful fencing master—and a lost translation of Fabri
FencingClassics
by JCA
4M ago
Early modern fencing masters could make a mint teaching, provided they enjoyed the favor of a potentate. Sometimes, they made too much… —J. Christoph Amberger After Fabri had left Padua for Copenhagen in the late 1590’s, his position as fencing instructor to the students was filled by a progression of successors: Tomasini, in 1654, kindly includes a list of instructors in the exercitia (here called gymnastica) that allows us to reconstruct the line of Gymnasticis following “Salvator de Fabris Regis Daniae Eques, & Magister“—Antonius Tortellius, Tagliaferrus, Gaspar Maga ..read more
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Happy Independence Day!
FencingClassics
by JCA
4M ago
‘t ain’t Fourth of July until the Warthogs fly by! In my neck of the woods, the Independence Day parade is kicked off by the flyover off two A-10’s from nearby Martin’s Airfield: Coincidentally, we just discovered that it was 408 years ago to the day, on July 4, 1616, that 30-years-old Heinrich von und zum Velde (whose life has consumed an inordinate amount of research and space in this site, not to mention my life over the past 2 years) enrolled at the University of Leyden, in whose Matrikel he appears as “Henricus a Velde Pomeranus 30J.). From here, he would travel to Padua, where he e ..read more
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