The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570 [Hardcover]

Joachim Meyer (Author), Jeffrey L. Forgeng (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1403970920 | ISBN-13: 978-1403970923 | Publication Date: October 19, 2006 | Edition: 2nd

Among the substantial legacy of martial arts texts left by combat masters working in the medieval German tradition, this book stands out as one of the most remarkable and important, translated for the first time in English by Jeffrey Forgeng. The only major original text in this corpus to be disseminated in print, Meyer's manual is an ambitious comprehensive encyclopedia of traditional German martial arts, covering a range of weapons forms, and offering a rationalized introduction to a complex and organic tradition inherited from the Middle Ages.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Forgeng is Paul S. Morgan Curator at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Adjunct Associate Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd edition (October 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403970920
• ISBN-13: 978-1403970923
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,661,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Fencing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must, June 13, 2008

By 

Somyunguy - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570 (Hardcover)

This translation is far from perfect, but it's a must for students of the renaissance martial arts. The frustrating flaws with this presentation are that everything is translated, including terms for specific movements and techniques. Students who are used to using the original, specific German terms for certain techniques will be thrown off by the variable, hard to catch, less specific English terms and phrases they are replaced with.

It would have been far better if they could have left technique names and terms in the original language, perhaps italicised, and defined elsewhere in the book or in margins.

Also, the pictures for each section are clustered in the end of each chapter, making one flip back and forth constantly in study.

Aside from all that, the book is one of the best out there. Published in the late prime of true renaissance martial arts culture, many mistake it for a "sportified" version of earlier combative arts. In reality, it is simply presented in more of an established, martial arts school type format, giving yet more perspective on techniques of the same, old tradition. It has quite a variety of weapons, training drills and methods, and principles expounded upon withing it's covers.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for historic combat geeks, January 11, 2010

By 

Greg Coffman (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570 (Hardcover)

This book can be very confusing to read, but then again it was written in the 1500s in German and was recently translated. If you are into historic combat arts, it is very good. It begins with longsword techniqus, then transfers them to dusak (precursor to German Sabre) techniques, then translates them to rapier techniques. If you're only interested in rapier, then you may look elsewhere, because the rapier part only make sense if you've studied the dusak part, which only makes sense if you've studied the longsword part.

I've found it not too difficult to follow, especially with the woodcuts included with the text.