Paulus Hector Mair
Augsburg city official who compiled extensive fencing compendia with illustrations by Jörg Breu the Younger in the 1540s.
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Paulus Hector Mair was an Augsburg city official and author of extensive illustrated manuscripts on fencing and combat. He was born in 1517 in Augsburg and died there on 10 December 1579 at the age of 62. His wife was Felizitas Kötzler.
He served as secretary of the Augsburg city council, from 1541 as city treasurer and from 1545 as supply master (Rationmeister). Who taught him fencing we have not found in the sources.
In the 1540s he produced his manuscripts MSS Dresd.C.93 and C.94, early compendia written in Early New High German. In the same period he created a Latin version, Cod.icon. 393, the artistically most demanding of his manuscripts, and a Vienna version, Cod. 10825 and 10826, which combines both language versions. In 1548 the collection Cod.icon. 312b was produced, and in 1553 he completed an unfinished treatise by Antonio Rast under the title Reichsstadt Schätze no. 82. The manuscripts cover the longsword, the messer, the staff, the spear, the pike, the halberd, the scythe, the flail, the peasant's cudgel, the dagger, wrestling, variants of the rapier, the glaive, and combat in armour and on horseback. For the illustrations he worked with the painter Jörg Breu the Younger and hired two Augsburg fencers as models.
In 1579 he was denounced by a dissatisfied assistant. The subsequent investigation uncovered embezzlement of city funds, and Mair was arrested and hanged.