Society of Liechtenauer
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Johannes Liechtenauer's art of fencing
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| Liechtenauer's zedel | |
This image of a seated master precedes the gloss of Liechtenauer's teachings in the Codex 44A.8.
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| Ascribed to | Johannes Liechtenauer |
| Language | Middle High German |
| Date | 14th century |
| State of existence | oral tradition, fixed in several versions beginning c. 1400 |
| Principal manuscript(s) | |
Johannes Liechtenauer (also Lichtnauer, Hans Lichtenawer) was a 14th-century German fencing master who had a great level of influence on the German fencing tradition.
Liechtenauer seems to have been active during the mid-to-late 14th century. The only extant biographical note on Liechtenauer is found in GNM Hs. 3227a (dated c. 1400), the oldest text in the tradition, which states that "Master Liechtenauer learnt and mastered [the art of the sword] in a thorough and rightful way, but he did not invent it or make it up himself, as it is stated before. Instead, he travelled across and visited many lands for the sake of this rightful and true art, as he wanted to study and know it."
His surname indicates he was from a place called Liechtenau (modern Lichtenau). There are several places with this name. Massmann (1844) mentions five candidate locations: Lichtenau im Mühlkreis in Upper Austria; Lichtenau in Franconia, Nuremberg; Lichtenau on the Rhine, Baden, near Strasbourg; Lichtenau in Hesse; and Lichtenau in Westphalia, near Paderborn. Of these he treats as the most likely Franconian Lichtenau, because Nuremberg was a center of later (Renaissance-era) fencing, and Lichtenau in Upper Austria, because of the geographical provenance suggested by the members of the Society of Liechtenauer.
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