Strasbourg was a hotbed of fencing action in the late 16th century. Dozens of fencers requested fechtschul from 1550 to 1600, from Meyer himself to one off requests from visiting fechtmeisters just in town for a short stay. One of the quirks of this era is that even with so many fencing masters appearing in the records, there are very few fencing authors represented in this massive datapool of fencing-requestors, with only Joachim Meyer himself and Lienhardt Sollinger being among the published classes. However, this does not mean that the names of fencers who practiced in Strasbourg didn’t appear in fencing treatises published or compiled by other authors.
In comes the Hans Medel Fechtbuch (Cod.I.6.2º.5). This “compilation” fechtbuch put together by the one and only embezzler fechtmeister himself, Paulus Hector Mair, is a very interesting and unique fencing book. It contains a standard gloss of Lichtenauer’s work, some tidbits on longsword fencing, interesting prints of fencers in action, but also has within it a series of notes about the Marxbrüder and their rules and rolecalls in Augsburg and Frankfurt. It is one of the best sources for insight into the fencing regulations put forth by the biggest fencing guild of the time, and does us a solid by having a massive list of fencing masters who were approved by the Marxbrüder from the 1490s into the 1560s. Jens P. Klienau extracted and listed all of the names here.
Seven of the fencing masters who were noted in the fechtbuch and bestowed the title “Meister des Langen Schwerts” also appear within the Strasbourg Council of XXI records as well, some both as fencers and as citizens. Their names below are extracts from the fechtbuch itself.
Some of these fechtmeisters were transient, only appearing briefly in the records and requesting a single fechtschul (such as Bastian in 1554), while others had perhaps a couple or handful of mentions in the Strasbourg records. Blasius, for example, requested 2 fechtschul in 1563, Caspar two in 1559, and Michael requested 5 from 1559 to 1563 and overlapped temporally with Meyer and Brack.
Over the next few articles, however, I will explore some of the lives and records of the more prominent and noteworthy of these Marxbrüder. For example Herman Weiss who worked as a bookbinder and was a bit of a hardass when it came to the rules and regulations of the Marxbrüder (queue a fight with Peter Danzer). And Jorg Fretter (Freuder), who had a large Strasbourg family, some of whom worked for the government all the way into the 1670s. Wolff Brand I wrote about previously in my “Other Fechtmeisters” article, which you can read here.
Additionally, we will explore some of the many conflicts written about the Strasbourg Marxbrüder with their fellow fencers and fencing community. Through these articles I hope to paint a picture of a diverse fencing scene in Strasbourg, from the lives of the fechtmeisters themselves to how a Marxbrüder fencing monopoly may have been regulated, fencers knocking heads, and the city council stepping in to keep order between Marxbrüder and Freifechter.
Join me!
Big shoutout and thank you to Platy for your help in translation and transcription of the notes I compiled about the Marxbrüder of Strasbourg. We have so much interesting stuff to share with the world!