RAPIER FENCING in the GERMAN UNIVERSITIES

by Colonel Theodore Fix

De: [translated] M. P. Lynch

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Blood oozes from the young duelist’s chin. The doctor moves to inspect the injury as the arbiter consults his pocket watch to note the precise time of the blutung (blooding) in his book. The swordsmen are allowed to return to their marks, and there they raise their heavily padded right arms above their heads. The weapon arm takes on an almost saurian character at this moment, and the opponents allow the points of their rapiers to hang down in the space which separates them. The seconds assume their positions, and at the command of “Los!” the combat begins anew. The motion of the blades is astonishingly quick as each man seeks to gash the visage of the other. With both seconds issuing lightning-quick parries to “inadmissible” cuts, the duel takes on a sort of clockwork character - though this is very much a matter of flesh and blood. The clash of the blades resounds through the hall until a slash lays open the scalp of one of the students. A halt is ordered and the physician rushes to the injured party, then makes clear with a sign that this second “blooding” marks the end of the contest, as the young man’s skull is visible and the quantity of blood is such that he would be unable to see his adversary. A general murmur of approval greets both the display of skill on the one hand and the stoical acceptance of pain on the other. This is Mensur: The German rapier duel with roots deep in the middle ages which lives on in the present day.

Colonel Theodore Fix had been taken prisoner in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but during his forced sojourn in Germany he was allowed the liberty, as an officer and a gentleman, to make himself at home in the town of Breslau. There he became acquainted with the ancient custom of the German rapier duel. As a Frenchman steeped in the traditions of thrust-centered fencing with épée and foil from the high-point guard, Fix was fascinated to discover this practice of cutting at an opponent with the edge of a heavy rapier from the hanging guard. As he states: “The moralist cannot help but find that this combat of resounding cuts, the effect of which is properly dosed violence, to be superior in comparison to our own version, which is so stark and implacable. Indeed, the excess danger which our national form of the duel entails makes it such that it has come to be surrounded by an unspeakable trove of formalized precautions.”

In Mensur the head is the sole target, and the scars received are just as much a mark of honor as those delivered. This also accounts for the many heavily scarred visages we see in photos of German officers of the first and second World Wars. Colonel Fix traces the origin of the German rapier style all the way back to the famous work of Joachim Meyer, and then offers a thorough outline for learning to fence with the rapier from the hanging guard in the Teutonic style. His work is mainly a translation of professor L. C. Roux’s work entitled The Art of Fencing with the Rapier and Saber according to the University Customs, but he also includes passages and images from the works of W. Fehn and F. Schulze for the sake of clarification and juxtaposition. Complete with a section on German saber fencing, Colonel Fix’s 1895 work offers the modern reader an authoritative overview of what might be considered one of the world’s most fascinating and enduring blood sports.
Errata: In section 31 under the head "Cover and Variation in Prime" the first sentence should read "...the direction and acceleration (Schwung) of the blade..." rather than "direction and vibration".