German School of Fencing
The longsword tradition traced to master Liechtenauer in the fourteenth century. It is not an unbroken line of teaching — today's HEMA reconstructs it from manuscripts.
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About German School of Fencing
The German school of fencing is the collective name for a tradition that the sources trace to master Johannes Liechtenauer, attested in the fourteenth century. He left no manual of his own: his teaching was passed on by students as verse mnemonics known as the Zettel, deliberately opaque to outsiders, and only the commentaries spell them out. The oldest manuscript containing them is Hs. 3227a from the end of the fourteenth century, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. The core of the teaching is the two-handed longsword, but the tradition also covers the messer, dagger, spear, armoured combat and wrestling. The school rests on a few principles: seizing and keeping the initiative (Vor and Nach), reading the pressure of the opponent's blade by feel (Fühlen), and striking with a single motion that also covers. The technical core is the five so-called hidden strikes — Zornhau, Krumphau, Zwerchhau, Schielhau and Scheitelhau. The tradition was carried on by Sigmund Ringeck, Peter von Danzig, Paulus Kal and, in the sixteenth century, Joachim Meyer. Since the 1990s modern HEMA has been reconstructed from these texts. It is therefore right to call this an art documented by sources rather than an unbroken line of teaching: several centuries separate the last historical masters from today's practitioners.
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Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.