Hans Lecküchner
Nuremberg priest, author of the treatise Kunst des Messerfechtens on fencing with the dussack, completed in 1482 and dedicated to Count Palatine Philip the Sincere.
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Hans (Johannes) Lecküchner was a priest and the author of the treatise Kunst des Messerfechtens (The Art of Fencing with the Dussack). He was born around the 1430s in Nuremberg and died on 31 December 1482 in Herzogenaurach.
In 1455 he enrolled at the University of Leipzig and in 1457 obtained a bachelor's degree. In 1459 he was ordained a Catholic acolyte, later became a priest, and from 1480 until his death served as parish priest in Herzogenaurach. Who taught him fencing we have not been able to verify.
Two possible autograph manuscripts of the treatise have survived: Cod. Pal. Germ. 430, completed between 1478 and 1482, and Cgm 582, completed on 19 January 1482. He dedicated the treatise to Count Palatine Philip the Sincere of the House of Wittelsbach. The text was further disseminated in copies by Hans von Speyer (1491), Gregor Erhart (1533), Paulus Hector Mair (1540s) and Lienhart Sollinger (1556), and in Christian Egenolff's printed anthology (1531).
His teaching was later incorporated into Liechtenauer's school of fencing. The theory that the name Lecküchner might derive from the name Liechtenauer is refuted by contemporary evidence.