J. Christoph Amberger: It has been pretty much a life-long obsession for me, with all kinds of swords–any kind of weapon. My parents let me have all kinds of toy weapons, from pistols to swords, in the hopes that I'd eventually outgrow them. Unfortunately, that was just one more expectation I disappointed.

I'm from a somewhat Old-World family: As long as a particular physical activity, such as the martial arts, was concerned, one that is not part of the classic bürgerlich background, it was automatically prioritized as peripheral to life. Fencing was outside of that background, both from the side of my mother and especially from my father’s side. (My grandfather belonged to a dueling fraternity, and family rumor has it that he was actually excommunicated for a saber duel in the 1920s.) My father declined to join any kind of duelling fraternity during his youth– but I felt drawn the other way.

MW: So when, then, did you begin your study of fencing?

JCA: I didn’t pick up fencing until I went abroad to study at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. It was kind of a double new beginning for me, as I both started fencing and I met my wife there.

MW: You didn’t mention where you were raised.

JCA: I was raised in West Berlin, Germany. I grew up in West Berlin and started studying in West Berlin. Let's say I'm a product of metropolitan provincialism. I left in 1984 when I got a stipend to study abroad in Scotland, which screwed up my nicely laid-out path in life.

MW: How so, it sounds like it was really the best thing for you?

JCA: Oh yes, you can say that again. I was originally starting out to become a dentist, like my father and grandfather and uncle and mother and brother. So when I reluctantly returned to Germany in '85, the only thing I really got involved in my displaced state of existence was fencing. I dropped out of dentistry school and went studied English, journalism, and economics.

In early 1985 a school friend had introduced me to one of those dueling fraternities that had been so vilified in my youth. The thing that really attracted me was the dueling part–even though it's a completely different sword-fighting system than the sports fencing I had been doing up to then.

MW: Is there a name or school to which sports fencing belongs?

JCA: Well, I'd characterize my early training as generic Collegiate fencing. My main weapon then, as with every beginner, was the foil. I had also picked up on epee and saber. Saber is not very popular in Germany, so it was very difficult to get lessons.

MW: What was the name of your fencing master at this time?

JCA: Quite honestly, in Scotland, I don’t even recall my instructor's full name. He was a short, middle-aged Scot they called Dougie. Although he had a limp, he had really rapid, crisp, clean execution; an amazing fencer. I wish I remembered his name.

When I went back to Berlin I continued with foil and epee and was taught by a female instructor named Martina Gödicke–a pentathlete with a strong fencing background.

Then in May of ‘85, I got my start in the old German broadsword system, the Schläger. My fencing master was Jurek Kaczmarek–one of those Polish fencing mercenaries of the pre-glasnost era. He was actually part of the 1970 Polish foil team that took the gold at the Olympics . He was teaching bell-guard Schläger to the Berlin corps.

MW: What it a difficult switch for you?

JCA: It was something. I remember my first fencing lesson at the Corps house. In my foresight, I had brought my fencing jacket and fencing glove, which are both very elegant and very white. Then I entered the fencing loft in the attic of this turn-of-the-century building. So I found myself among raw brick and mortar and rafters, with a few bloodstained shirts and bandages hanging near the window, and there's is a bunch of guys standing in dirty, grimy, sweat-stained fencing aprons, which feel like they're made from padded burlap, with heavy helmets, heavy weapons, padded fencing cuffs over the elbows, massive gloves. (The bell-guard Schläger gloves are like boxing gloves because the knuckle-guard only gives insufficient protection to the hand.) And picture me standing there like a moron, twiddling that pansy foil glove in my hand.

It was an incredibly difficult process to learn the first cut, the high quart, in the Schläger system. It completely eradicates everything you have known about fencing before. You really have to get acquainted with the concept of attacking from continuous cover–and using the defensive angle of your arm and blade to guard and attack by shifting that angle in one continuous fluid motion while always keeping your head covered. Any sloppiness, and you'll end up with a 7-inch gash across your scalp or face.

Oddly, one of the most difficult parts is to learn how to cut with the edge, not with the half-sharp or the flat of the blade, from a very odd angle. In the Schläger system, a cut is executed from the combined rotational forces of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. When the tip of the cutting edge hits your opponent’s head, your sword arm has to be straight, with your upper arm lying closely across your face, your fist pointing as high up to the left as you can get it. And to get that straight and then actually return into guard position without providing an opening, takes about four to six weeks of daily training, just to master this one movement.

You need to get to viscerally understand the rhythm of the bout, because it is a very fast, very rapid exchange of cuts. When I was in good shape I was able to cut and parry about six times in less than two seconds. At that speed, you have to develop an instinctive grasp of what is going on. Your vision is limited. You see the basket of your opponent’s sword, but the best clues you can get are from his face and the rhythm of the steel. The only way to hit someone who is cutting and attacking from a covered position is to break his time. It’s like the stop cut or the time thrust in sports fencing. Unless you exploit a weakness in your opponent's form, you have to break the time by doubling your cuts, varying your speed, without letting up in your attack.

I had a hard time unlearning instinctive and conditioned reflexes – the reactive fencing that I had been trained in before. In Schläger, you have to do your thinking before you actually start fencing, and control every small reflex and involuntary motion. It took me about five months of daily fencing–of two or three hours a day for about five months–just to be able to fight my first sharp bout.

MW: Didn’t you have your first duel fairly close to this time?

JCA: Yes. During my first full semester of membership I did my first three Mensuren, that's the German term for these student duels. I got a little scratched up, but nothing major. Then I decided to drop out of dentistry school, and my parents suggested I should go to West Germany to do my thing. So that they wouldn’t have to watch my decline, I guess. I went to West Germany and joined another fraternity.

MW: Did you find there to be stark differences between the fraternities, fencing styles, and training in West Germany than in Berlin?

JCA: Most West German university cities use the basket-hilt Schläger, which has quite a different technique. It is not quite as fast as the bell-guard Schläger, but uses another sub-set of movements that takes awhile to master. I went to the University of Göttingen. I fought my last three Mensuren in Göttingen. But since I didn’t find an opponent for my fourth, I had to go back to Berlin on short notice.

That one was a complete massacre because I had been training on the slower weapon, which has a much more secure grip. You have a leather sling instead of an iron ring to hold onto the weapon. I think in the first five rounds I got hit three or four times. Actually, out of my seven duels, there were only two where I was taken out for medical reasons; the cuts had been accumulating a little too rapidly. That was the first one in which that happened.

MW: Are you saying that these duels were carried out with actual, sharp steel blades?

JCA: Yes, the blades are sharp. But you're pretty well protected: You wear a full body plastron that these days is made up of a long Kevlar shirt, with a chain mail shirt on top. Your neck is wrapped up to your jaw line and you wear a iron goggles to protect your eyes, with thick leather straps to cover your ears. The target is the opponent's head and the lower part of the face.

MW: Do you have any type of protective mask or covering over your head during these duels?

JCA: None except for the goggles.

MW: So what happens when you get hit in the head with a sword during the duel?

JCA: You either end up with a nasty bump if your opponent hits flat. Or with a bleeding cut.

MW: Isn’t the sword fairly heavy and able to inflict deadly damage?

JCA: No. The weapon is indeed heavier than a sports weapon. But the blade configuration, technique, rules, your second, and your protective gear pretty much prevent any serious injury–apart, of course, from cuts. But your skull actually takes a lot more punishment than you think it would. Actually, your scalp takes a lot more punishment than you think. There is only a remote chance of accident. So I did my seven duels and I was a second in probably 25 more.

MW: What is the role of the second during a duel?

JCA: Your second is your protector and agent–who is right at your side and keeps an eye out for illegal cuts. He also protects you between rounds: Sometimes people snap and continue to cut after Halt, which can be very dangerous, particularly if you’re naive enough to go out of your guard too early. I heard about a case when one fencer during an intermission grabbed his sword, stormed over and just hit the other guy point blank in the head. Your second is kind of your insurance policy that your opponent is not going to do anything stupid.

MW: Is there a significance to the number seven when one engages in fencing duels?

JCA: No. My Göttingen corps required one duel to become a full member, and a total of three to become inactive. Inactive means you didn’t have as many duties any more in the fraternity. My Berlin fraternity would allow full membership to the active corps after two Mensuren, with a minimum of five to become inactive. I did two more just for the heck of it.

MW: Why, weren’t you damaged enough from the other five?

JCA: In a way, you know, you start not to care about the cuts and scars. They heal fast. And after your first duel, everything falls into a different perspective. It is a mental change. You wrote in your book Filipino Martial Culture about the idea of sacred space and time, wherein certain martial artists wear their logo or carry their sticks to signify the cross-over between the sacred and profane spaces and mind sets. In a way, I think the dueling scar is a kind of permanent manifestation of this. It’s like a tattoo that you carry around with you for your entire life.

When my girlfriend at that time (she's now my wife) saw me after I had been hit in my cheek, she just looked at me and said, "I’m not gonna marry damaged goods." In a way, that is really how I felt, but not in a negative way. The scar was really just on the surface, but in a way my life had been going through so many revolutions: After dropping out of dentistry school, I no longer had any idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up".

MW: What year was this?

JCA: That was in 1987. This dueling thing is something that has prompted me to take a more philosophical view of life. If I look at the life of a man, I think there are certain phases in your life that you go through, and this is kind of the rambunctious young manhood phase that is or hopefully would be concluded at age 24 or 25. And most of the corps students that I knew in my time stopped dueling when they hit 24 or 25. There is a certain point that separates the sublime and the ridiculous. If you have a 29 or 30 year old still living that life-style, something is wrong with him.

So that is where my interest in fencing came from.

MW: When did you relocate to the United States and what was the rationale behind doing so?

JCA: I came over to the States when I was 25, in 1989. My wife and I had been in this long-distance relationship holding pattern for five years and just reached a point where you have to make a decision. I knew this was what I wanted–and came over with a big fencing bag full of stuff. I had all my weapons with me and a second set of clothes and a couple of books. I started to work and finished my master’s in 1991.

MW: What was your master’s degree in?

JCA: I went to St. John’s College's Graduate Institute in Annapolis, Maryland, one of the Great Book programs. So my master's in liberal arts, heavily focused on philosophy.

MW: Were you able to continue pursuing your fencing interests after emigrating to the United States and during graduate school?

JCA: I didn’t really have time to do much fencing while I was a grad student. I did fence saber afterwards for about two more years here in Baltimore, at Salle Pallasz under Coach Richard Oles. Actually, he is one of the old school fencing coaches. I think he starts out with a novice class of about 30 people. By the end of the first three months, he has them down to about two who have the stamina to actually pursue something. This was actually the period when I think I actually learned most about saber fencing.

MW: What influence has your Schläger background had on your life?

JCA: I feel something like a living fossil. This is really the modern remnant of a very old broadsword system which was practiced throughout Europe, England, even in America from the dawn of time until the 1840s. It only became more restricted and somewhat more rarefied in Germany after the 1850s and developed into this slightly degenerated form.

It lacks the athletic emphasis. There is a mental, a moral element in it. It is nearly a life philosophy: You consider your actions before you act and accept the consequences no matter what they may be. You take control of yourself and find out what's at the core of your personality. You have to develop an instinctive evaluation of a situation. And then of course the most practical of it all: Don’t attack unless you know you are covered.

MW: This system sounds very practical from a realistic point of view. How would the techniques and strategies hold up in a sports fencing bout?

JCA: Of course, it’s a restricted system and you can’t really apply it to sports fencing. Your stance is static, you don't work with distance, and rather than avoiding a hit by a quick movement you actually stand and take it rather than break your pattern. The sports fencer would accumulate his 5 or 10 points by flicking at my sleeve or dragging the flat of his saber across my vest.

But some Schläger elements are still viable against sports fencers–some of the cuts and combinations no director will ever recognize in a sports fencing bout. But they are very effective. If I had to gamble my physical integrity, in a hypothetical bout with sharp weapons, I think I'd probably be better off using the fighting philosophy behind the broadsword and the Schläger rather than the sports techniques.

MW: When did your academic interest in fencing begin?

JCA: When we started to have kids, most of our spare time pretty much went up in smoke. I had to kind of funnel my obsession with swordplay into research which was helped by my different perspective. I could tell that some of the typical mythology in fencing just was wrong. So bit by bit I started scraping together all the shreds of literature I could find.

MW: Is your research concentrated on the German schools in particular?

JCA: No, my interest now really is on the entire spectrum of Western edged weapons combat. I feel underqualified to say much about Asian systems because I have no training background in them. I had few kendo lessons and a lowly belt in taekwondo, but I would never go out and say I have a background in Asian martial arts.

Now, the old European martial arts did combine all the wrestling, grappling, throwing, kicking techniques that you find in many Asian martial arts. But because of my focused–hey, let's face it: limited–background, I could never compare the effectiveness of the old European systems and the modern Asian systems because I really don’t have the capacity to give a qualified opinion on that. My interest is predominantly in the Western systems.

My strength is putting phenomena into perspective by just the sheer number of sources I have accumulated. I can look at a passage in an 18th century manual and I say Okay, this is a logical development of this or that predecessor, that one is related to a different system practiced in a different country, this is really just the same guard that this rapier master from the late 1500s calls by a different name. And I can see the continuations both on the artistic level and on the practical, self-defense level through the 18th and 19th centuries into the present. That’s what truly interests me.

Also, part of it is trying to reconstruct some of those old schools. For example, in Germany, documented throughout the late 1400s through the early 18th century, there is that German wooden cutting weapon, called the dussack. Except for a couple of university students in Vienna in the 1880s, no one has really tried to recreate that system or tried to find out what all these maneuvers that are depicted in the manual were about.

You see, illustrations in a manual provide only a snapshot out of a combative situation–a pair of fighters, one in a classical upper guard position and the other in the lower guard. If we’re lucky we have a sequential images, where you have a start, middle, and finish–where the cuts lands. But that is very rare. If you were to make a movie out of one maneuver, you would have maybe a thousand pictures that go to describe the motions from the start through the end of the form. But you only have one frame of that sequence in these manuals.

So what are you going to do with that? How can you reconstruct how the weapon was carried from the guard position into the hit? Was it a flowing motion that maintained cover while cutting, like in the modern Schläger, or was it just a direct cut and recovery? What did the weapon really look like? You have all these very various drawings. Some dussacks look like a wooden board with just a hole in it. Others are very specific: there’s a broadening of the blade base which I have tried to reconstruct by building these wooden weapons. Based on these differences: where exactly is the balance point of the weapon? In the modern fencing weapons, it’s very close to the hilt In the old style cutting weapons, the balance point is farther down in the blade, which influences the entire way of handling the weapon. If there is no weight, you can make nice, close circular parries with one of those weapons. They just handle differently.

But no one has any real blueprints of these weapons. Finding the most reasonable compromise you can derive at by evaluating a number of sources, both images and descriptions is what I like to do and what my ongoing challenge is.

MW: There are so many old fencing manuals in existence. In a number of those manuals you see a lots of line drawings wherein a gentleman has a sword and dagger with a geometric diagram in from of his depicting the cut angles and footwork patterns. Who originated this conceptual way of studying fencing?

JCA: I think a lot of the footwork and the striking patterns–the "magical circle" or "mysterious circle" as it is sometimes called–are actually used in different contexts. I think one of the images you have in mind is probably the plate of Sutor, a 1612 German manual, which is actually a compilation and plagiarism of a 1570s German manual by Joachim Meyer and another German named Hundt. They used the circle just to trace the path of the blade in the different cuts.

Then you have the Spanish school, which is based on geometric truths. In a way it is a very Socratic system. Socrates, in his dialogues, uses geometry to illustrate a truth finding process toward absolute truth. The Spanish schools have a similar approach.

Geometry at the time the Spanish systems were perfected was very heavily drenched in alchemy and hermeneutics. The Spanish school is so complex I would have to say I feel unqualified to have an opinion about it–because I am completely outside of that philosophical circle. If you go through my book, The Secret History of the Sword, you will also notice the Spanish school by its glaring absence.

There is one guy who I know in New York, Ramon Martinez, who is still schooled in the remnants of that school and who has written several very good articles on the demystification of the Spanish school. I think that to understand the Spanish school you would have to have the full educational background of an Italian or Spanish nobleman at that time. If you look, for example, at Camillo Agrippa, his fencing manual was only one book that he wrote. He was into alchemy, he was into mystics, architecture, he was into geometry, all these semi-magical forerunners of modern science. What you really have here is nearly a lost world of intellectual background that is reflected into their systems.

The circles you see in Sutor or Meyer are carried through the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even the 20th centuries. In the Schläger system we still learn the cuts by imagining the head as a circle.

The only practical application of this kind of circle I have ever found is in a 1798 English fencing manual by Roworth. Here, he actually incorporates exactly that same circle in his book, but uses it to illustrate the sequence of cuts you should execute with your cutting sword if attacked at night. You start with a diagonal cut from upper right to lower left, you follow up with a diagonal cut from upper left to lower right, then there is a slight break because it is a very unanatomical movement, you do the same from the downside up again from both directions, and then you follow through by two horizontal cuts, from the right to the left and then from the left to the right. And that is the only real practical application of the circle that I have seen outside of the Spanish schools.

MW: If I recall correctly, at one time the Spanish school was quite feared. However it then became rather caught up in its mental masturbation and lost its focus on the practical, almost dying out as a result. Is there any truth to this?

JCA: I think, particularly in fencing, you always deal with at least two layers of practice: there's the geeky, overly cerebral approach that gets lost in its own rules and theories, and the no-nonsense, practical fighting skill that responds to a thrust by catching the point in your flesh while braining your opponent with a pommel strike to the forehead.

The Spanish probably developed the most esoteric system, which is reflected in manuals like Thibault's. But in how far those manuals reflected the everyday use of the sword is another question. Not everyone had the time or the inclination to learn the geomantic and geometric backgrounds of the system. Its practical use was probably restricted to fighting another guy trained within that system.

You also have to look at the distribution of power in Europe at that time. For a period, Spanish rapier schools were popular in Italy and the Netherlands, but that was usually in times that where Spain played a major power role in the overall cultural or political presence in those nations. Then you have the Italian masters which probably took a lot of the practical, hands-on Spanish applications, and incorporated or adapted them. They, in turn, heavily influenced the Germans–be it only by the fact that they managed to get German translations out very quickly after their original publication.

So you have all these cultural cross-fertilizations going on that reflect the geo-political power distribution. And the more you dig into it, the more complex it becomes.

MW: Is there one school that you would consider the forerunner of the more popular schools in existence today?

JCA: Well, I think the pedigree of modern sports fencing is probably as complex as the spread of the different national rapier schools through Renaissance Europe. It probably was influenced probably on nearly equal terms by the French small sword and the Italian small sword systems. In themselves they were renovations or innovations, or maybe just applications of the underlying rapier systems.

You also need to consider what period or what national brand of athletic fencing you're looking at. In Germany, the Italian influence always predominated. In Britain, and then in America, the French influence dominated. Later on, there are different impulses again from Italy, for example, on the sports saber; from the French on the foil again; and then the Italians on the foil and saber, which then is furthered by the Hungarian adaptation of the Italian innovations in saber.

This is really a continuous give-and-take that has only become standardized, at least in the weaponry, at the beginning of this century. In some of the early Olympics in this century, the Italians walked out on the other competition because the French, who dominated the Federation Escrime International, prohibited them from using the Italian-style epees, which were two inches longer than the French style.

Even the current brand of modern sports fencing is in constant flux. The Russians are very much different from the Italians and Hungarians and French. Then there's this one man in Germany, a former hair dresser by the name of Emil Beck, who single-handedly revolutionized the German approach to fencing after the war. Then we have a Hungarian, Kevey, after WWII, who emigrated to Poland and completely turned around the Polish style of saber fencing, which then is picked up by the Russians who in turn develop it further.

Today, China has become more visible in international competition. At first they tried to copy the Italians and the French and the Russians. Now they are in the process of actually developing something on their own. It is new way to arrive at the same goal, which is scoring first, that may have been imported from the scientific insights they have derived over the last couple of years from sports that may even be derived from Chinese martial arts. I don’t know where it is coming from because it is still very hard to get into the Chinese method of training. Obviously most of the written documentation is in Chinese. And hey, who reads Chinese...

MW: You state the these individuals "revolutionized" the art. How can one person go about changing the face of a system to such a profound degree?

JCA: Look at fencing as a means of achieving a target. The systematic approach depends on what the target is. Did you want to kill your opponent? Did you want to kill him quickly? Did you want to kill him with style? Did you just want to have gentlemanly amusement? Did you want to score a touch? Did you want to score a touch in style?

Style was still a very important criteria like in the 1860s. There's all these beautiful calisthenics, the old form that you have your arm gracefully arched over your head and you throw it back while you lunge to get that extra stability and forward velocity.

Today, modern fencing is all about scoring a touch before your opponent does. Let me be more specific. It is about setting off the scoring apparatus first. Coaches like the Hungarian Kevey I mentioned looked at the intended result, and focused on what would get them there fast.

I am simplifying this, of course, but in athletic fencing competition, the revolutionary approach was to radically simplify. Cut the frills and take the stuff that the old masters were appalled by. Like the fleche, letting yourself fall forward with optimal linear energy projection and hit the opponent in the head with the saber, (which, now again, is outlawed in sabre after 50 years.) Kevey found it worked, looked at it in terms of "How do I do it best? Where do I look to get the best technique? Do I look at fellow fencers or do I look at other sports."

He looked at games like team handball, with its "dive throw". He looked at what the process of motion was and how to not only achieve the optimal transfer of energy but how to condition his fencers to do so without having to think about it. That's where the whole school of proprio-receptive conditioning and the modern sport sciences come in. These were only applied after the Second World War. This is when sports fencing became this athletic, high-powered activity that it is today.

If you look at high-level fencing tournaments with a classic's eye, all the pictures that make it into the fencing magazines worldwide show appalling form. The old masters would faint seeing people doing power jumps, dodging, being in the air with both feet off the ground.

MW: Let’s talk about fencers like Aldo Nadi, for example, who has accomplished so much in the field.

JCA: I think Nadi is probably the most arrogant son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever read–but unfortunately there isn’t a way of arguing with him.

MW: I agree. I have read his book, On Fencing, and his autobiography, The Living Sword, and his arrogance comes across quite well.

JCA: You know, you have to admire him. I admire him because he is one of the few fencers who could actually back it up. At his level of innately grasping the essence of fencing, he is so far beyond not only the general grasp of the sport, but so far beyond the advanced and the coaching level that you find today, that very few people can ever reached that. I think he is probably one of, if not the most perfect fencers in this century, and probably would have cut a good figure against most of the other masters in history.

Nadi did this one epee duel that I have picked apart, and he himself said that the duel is not necessarily a good gauge of a fencers ability. But I think no matter what weapon he would have picked up, his grasp of the fundamentals of using a sword was such that it wouldn’t have mattered what configuration it would have been.

MW: Do you think his expertise was a result of superior genetic make-up or of a superior training regimen?

JCA: He comes from this fencing dynasty; his father, his brother were the upper crust of master fencers. And it is probably both nature and nurture in that regard. Let’s face it, if you start fencing at four years old and have one of the best fencing masters in Italy as your father, then your direction is pretty much set.

MW: Nadi was also an actor, was he not?

JCA: Well, he advised on a couple of movies. I think he consulted on some of fencing choreography in a bunch of them.

MW: In his biography, Nadi really picked apart swashbucklers like Errol Flynn and movies like Scaramouche. There was one film I saw, however, that I felt had very realistic fencing in it. It was called The Duelists, and starred Harvey Keitel. What is your opinion of this film?

JCA: The choreography for that was done by William Hobbs, who is one of the best. If you read Hobbs’ books and look at his choreography, you know where he takes it from. It is very hard to judge the stage and movie fencers or choreographers’ work because the director really has the last word on it. William Hobbs, in my opinion, is one of the few who manages to get that compromise of authenticity and dramatic impact. There are very few who can do that.

MW: In The Duelists they have many dueling scenes wherein one of the participants get hurt, but not killed, and the fight is held for another day. Was this type of "honor fencing," wherein the combatants would only fight if both were at 100 percent, standard for the time?

JCA: The duel is nearly like an unofficial court procedure, with the blades doing the talking. The active fighters actually have absolutely no say in the duel. They delegate their decision power to their seconds. And their seconds have to take the advice of the doctors into consideration to arrive at a mutual decision. So the duelist himself has no choice but to acquiesce to what his second is saying. He can try to influence his second, but particularly if an opponent is down, the dueling regulations, which are the framework and soul of the duel, really kick in... to say if one man is injured to a degree that the doctor says he can no longer fight, the duel is to be declared finished.

Sometimes, there is the option that the duel could be suspended and continued once both fighters were up for it again, but that would have to be arranged beforehand. At that point, the opposing party can say we relinquish our right to insist on a continuation. That still survives in the Schläger Mensur.

MW: For the past couple of years, you have been publishing your own newsletter, Hammerterz Forum. What prompted you to begin this publishing venue?

JCA: It started after I got my third of fourth rejection of one of the articles I had written–a close analysis of Patton's 1913 saber system. But with fencing history, you pretty much sit between all chairs. The fencing magazines really care more about the ranking schedules. They will occasionally run an historical article. The arms and armor people don’t really care at all about fencing. They want to know about the weapons, how much they are worth, and the descriptive aspects of collecting. Military history is completely oblivious to sword fighting history. So, for me there was absolutely no medium to publish my hard fought for insights.

Since I am in the publishing business, I decided hey if what I learned had any practical value, and so I started self-publishing it. I started with 11 subscribers in 1994 and I am now at around 200. The point is to provide a medium for fencers who are interested in the history to 1) read about it, 2) argue about it, and 3) to further publish about it in this medium.

What I have noticed in the past couple of years is that the number of these researchers and the interest in this is growing. We are reaching a new generation. None of the leading researchers in the fencing field is really older than 35. And there’s a lot of different backgrounds and different levels of expertise, but there is the same obsession there.

A lot of them are also just interested in getting it as accurately as possible using the old manuals. Not only academically, as I have confined myself out of necessity, but also practically. What we have found is that a lot of the descriptions, once they are interpreted correctly and translated into movements and activities and sequences, are actually very effective fighting systems that have been dormant for 200 to 500 years.

So it’s a challenge to get everything right. And of course even in that small group of researchers, there are amazing struggles and hostilities and identification with schools–who really share the same interest. But the one guy rips the other for using epee blades in his rapier recreation. The other guy says well you can’t use blunt Schläger blades because they are cutting weapons. The other guy says sticks are fine . Some do foil and others don't even touch one out of principle. So you have these very emotional and very personal grudges and hostilities in that small group. Now, everyone has accumulated a small following of sorts. And so you have a following running into each other and hitting each other about the head.

MW: So how do you feel about all of this bickering and confrontation?

JCA: I usually believe there is a lot to be said for confrontation. Some of the best progress is derived from confrontation. But it gets annoying as hell after a while.

I think the best thing you could use this rivalry for would be to have these guys put their opinions to the test is a kind of kumite of Western Swordplay. Given the lack of sponsors, I guess this won't happen anytime soon...

MW: I heard that you were actually kicked off one of the on-line history recreation groups because they disagreed with you. What happened?

JCA: Well, I have a big mouth. I can be very insulting, particularly to those flaccid egos who limp around as sysops.

MW: Let’s talk for a bit about your book, The Secret History of the Sword. It is truly an impressive piece of work. An opus magnum, actually.

JCA: My book is great. Buy my book. Please.

The Secret History of the Sword is pretty much reflects the status I have arrived at with my research over the last seven years. It’s the quintessence of my approach, very detailed detective work piecing together ancient edged weapons fighting systems from the function and morphology of the weapons, wound descriptions and pathology, as well as a close interpretation of whatever shreds of sources have survived. It's amazing what stuff you find in the oddest places.

But I always attempt to balance the egghead academics with the entertaining, by providing the original sources, the stories, the adrenaline.

So, in a way it reflects the contents of my brain... kind of scattered and scatter brained and frequently going off into tangents that I hope I have confined to the footnotes.

For me, the world and fencing history is not the sum but the product of a thousand different factors from a lot of different aspects of life. So many things interlink, cultural phenomena, intellectual and philosophical currents, raw power politics. I’m trying to reflect this in the structure and the general approach of this book.

MW: Do you see an intimate connection between the philosophy of fencing and life?

JCA: Yes, actually. There is a German writer, who also happens to be a former fraternity brother of mine, who died in 1943, Hanns Heinz Ewers. He subtitled one of his books "A Novel in Shreds and Colors. " I think that's pretty damn close to reality: shreds and colors. Who was this Biblical figure? Wasn’t it Joseph who was given this coat of many colors by his father? In a way that is my image of life and history. It is a texture of elements that you don’t really know where they came from, you can’t even guess where they came from, but overall they provide a nearly psychedelic reflection of what life can be all about. Hey, sounds like a new meaning for Fabric of our Lives... maybe the U.S. Cotton Association should buy a pallet of the Secret History...

Mark Wiley is the author of Filipino Martial Arts (1996), and Filipino Martial Culture (1997)