Introducing AS&S/ASEMA German longsword training

[Gerard Kraay]

Please PM or e-mail expressions of interest to me.
Gerard Kraay
Head Instructor AS&SS

Minimum requirements for this training course are. A fencing mask, longsword waster and gloves.

Posted on behalf -

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Gerard has kindly invited me, an instructor at the Auckland chapter of the School of European Martial Arts (http://www.swordsmanship.co.nz), to present a 10-week course to Auckland Sword and Shield in the use of the two-handed sword in the Liechtenauer tradition, used in German-speaking countries in the 15th and 16th centuries. In ASEMA we aren't re-enactors, though a number do that as well, but rather we try to reconstruct and practice historical martial arts as they are presented in numerous texts from the period. I work in the Liechtenauer tradition, with a large amount of manuals preserved over the course of two centuries following from the teaching of Master Johannes Liechtenauer of Swabia, detailing the use of a number of weapons and unarmed combat. The longsword is the pre-eminent weapon in this tradition, and was held to be a weapon of great prestige as well as practicality, and a badge of military standing. It takes center stage in Liechtenauer's teaching, and learning its use is a natural introduction to the tradition. The tradition extends from the late middle ages to the early renaissance, and spreads from Swabia to throughout German-speaking Europe, becoming the style of both fencing guilds sanctioned to practice by the Holy Roman Empire.

Luckily, there is a young but flourishing field of people trying to reconstruct and practice historical swordsmanship, and for this course I will be working from a well-known and respected secondary source, Christian Tobler's 'Fighting with the German Longsword', as well as directly from a number of medieval manuals, prominently Sigmund Ringeck's unnamed fencing manual (manuscript MS Dresd. C 487) circa the 1440s, and Joachim Meyer's 1570 printed treatise 'Fundamental Descriptions of the Art of Fencing'. Tobler's book tells you more than enough to keep you happily occupied for months, while bookish fellows like myself delve into the originals in order to make sense of the finer points of the art.

The course will be based around a particular technique, called the Zornhau, the 'strike of wrath', which the masters sometimes describe as the 'father strike' and which illustrates all the principles of the art, which I will discuss at length. The Zornhau is one of five 'hidden' or 'master strikes' which sets the Liechtenauer tradition apart from
others: the others are the crooked strike (Krumpfhau), the thwart strike (Zwerchhau), the squint strike (Schielhau) and the scalp strike (Scheitelhau). I will present all of them and the contexts within which they were developed and should be used in, the positions you should take during fencing, as well as the general form of the fight which we in the field of historical swordsmanship have struggled long and hard to understand as best as we are able. I'll also prominently discuss a series of techniques and scenarios collected under the title of the Sprechtfenster, or 'speaking window', with which a number of aspects of good fencing form can be illustrated. If people are up for it, I'll also introduce a little bit of the corps-a-corp wrestling which plays an important role in this and other medieval fencing systems.

Marinus Ferreira
Instructor and founding member of Auckland School of European Martial Arts

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[Callum]

Marinus is an excellent instructor so AS&S is very lucky to have him teaching for them.

[Eisengezeit]

Marinus is me, btw, so if anybody has any questions or queries, I'll be able to answer them here.

[Gerard Kraay]

German longsword 15th – 16th centaury. (Historic European Swordsmanship)

Well after two weeks, German longsword is going well; I am finding it to be a subtle yet devastating weapon.

It is possible to see the difference between the art of a Masters system and generic sword flailing quickly, economy of motion and geometry to name but a part, come into play from the beginning.

We have another eight weeks of our winter German longsword workshop left, I am happy to accommodate anyone who would like to attend.

Gerard
AS&SS