The light seems dim... swallowed by the mass of dark-suited young men and looming Wilhelmian furniture. Despite all Old World trappings the atmosphere is primal, with a heart-pounding undercurrent of adrenaline and tension.

At the center of the room, surrounded by silent walls of spectators, two combatants are facing each other. They are young... strikingly so... cheecks flush with tense anticipation, their hair tousled and disheveled over black-beaked steel goggles and tightly laced mail shirts. From their fists, framed by battered three-colored steel basket hilts, project yard-long blades... murderous extensions of the thickly padded leather arm-guards. Foot-long cutting edges still reflect the effects of the grindstone in tight, wave-like serrations that manage to transmit the physical sensation of their cold, stinging bite...

Suddenly, curt Germanic commands send swords straight into the air. Another bark, and weapons crash into baskets, thud onto armguards, scream into each other in a seconds-long collision of force, born of desperation and primal aggression. Seemingly without plan or purpose, cuts rattle like hail... until another bark creates unnatural silence.

Staggering from the impact of the interjecting seconds, the fighters lower the blades in sideways arcs. A tuft of hair settles like pixie dust... and a thin rivulet of red blossoms within the streaming sweat of one man's temple... its complacent trickle rudely shook up by another exchange of glottal Teutonic barks...

If you believe the missionaries of the moralistically correct mainstream, the Mensur, or student "duel" as practised by German fraternities, represents a lamentable and discreditable display of chauvinist and reactionary male elitism. Add the at best latent anti-Germanism that permeates late 19th- and early 20th-century British and American literature, and the open anti-Germanism of the post-WWII German liberal establishment, and you might get the impression that a Mensur is an event just a wet match shy off a cross burning...

A Mensur is a primal affair, to be sure. Its setting and ritualistic severity of purpose are off-putting to the modern mind. Its inherent potential, even probability of blood-letting warrants all natural physical responses the unitinitated infallibly will experience... the visceral aversion against gore and brutality... and, of course, the nagging doubts as to how one will react to the sight of blood.

To the fencer's eye, the Mensur presents a mass of seemingly planless pounding. A mess of blades hitting without apparent skill or strategy at ridiculously short distance. There's no evident parrying or feinting, no work with distance, no athletic lunges, retreats, or balestras. The combatants – can you even call them fencers? – stand immovably, left hand tightly grabbing the belt on the small of the back, and only the sword arm executing what looks like thoroughly antiquated moulinets.

And yet, if you begin to analyze the underlying intellectual approach to the Mensur, you will inevitably discover a microcosm of fencing truth in a system that warrants it to placed as a mature part of Europe's scientific tradition of arms.

There are common traditions that link the Schläger to broadsword, backswording, and singlestick systems practiced through France and Britain until the middle of the 19th century. Military use of the German-style basket hilt Schläger – at least for training purposes – is not only documentable in the German-speaking countries and states (where 19th-century university administrators added to their revenues by selling confiscated student weapons to the local garrisons), but was practiced in most parts of Central Europe, including the Baltic countries – even Russia and the United States.

Johann Georg Heck, in his Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature, and Art (1851)¹ includes the practice of the German broadsword (here called "cut-and-thrust foil") in his volume on the military sciences. Athletic equipment seller Spalding advertises German "Haute-Rapiers" (a corruption of Haurapier, or cutting rapier²) until before World War I. (In fact, most basket-hilt Schlägers sold on eBay these days have never been used in Germany, but were imported by New York-based outfitter Lau for domestic use.)

The system itself is documented sparsely before the late 1700s, mostly because its main practitioners, students at German universities, preferred to use the fashionable weapons of their respective periods to settle their quarrels. It was only after the French Revolution and the smallsword's demise as an accouterments of gentlemanly attire that the more rustic Schläger (also called Hieber³) gained widespread acceptance. Popularity flourished after the Napoleonic Wars, when many German students served as volunteers in the military.

Schläger I is comparable on all levels to its European broadsword counterparts. We finds its elements reflected closely in the Highland Broadsword and the Cutlass Exercise of Henry Angelo, as well as the spadroon and broadsword systems of Roworth and Taylor. Friedrich August Wilhelm Ludwig Roux (writing as W. Roux⁴) provides the "Bible" of this early variety, which was practiced from about 1800 to 1870.

This form is characterized by the comparatively wide distance between the fencers and a resulting flexible stance: Most German system required that the back foot be immovable (the Italian "pede fermo"), but for the blade to reach the worthwhile targets, the right foot had to be moved forward.

The target included head, torso, sword arm, as well as the leg (although Roux warns against it, given the opening a n attack at the leg created for the attacker.) Bouts were fought until blood had been drawn according to the rules (First Blood or "Anschiss", a "scoring system" in use at the time of the Renaissance Fechtschulen). Deaths occurred not infrequently, caused mostly by accidental severing of the axillary artery if one of the combatants had the bad luck to lunge into a seconde ward.

The weapons of this period can be easily identified: Their baskets are quite narrow and angular to tulip-shaped. They lack the later addition of the tierce quillon to protect the outside wrist of the sword hand.

His system is the "gedeckte Hiebfechten"– cut fencing from cover, which he introduced his Deutsches Paukbuch. Roux called the art of fencing "the science of wedge, lever, and pendulum". Accordingly, his system is imprinted by the conscious consideration of physics.

Roux's fundamental contribution was to marry offensive technique with defensive consideration. Where his early work focuses on attacks and parries, attacks in the new system double as wards: If applied correctly, the angle of blade and padded arm-guard forms a constantly adjusting protective cover around the fencer's target area.

The style of this period is characterized by a dynamic reactive exchange of cuts. Fencers would take their cue for counters from the opponent's action. The defensive second nature of the attack from cover provided the possibilities of "offensive parries", i.e., blade actions that combined the features of parry and riposte. Almost every cut had a counter-cut associated, which exploited the opponent's cut-inherent opening while closing one's own. One of the characteristic of Schläger II is that the seconde cut – the weakest cut possible – is still taught (albeit recommended as a cut against the opponent's sword arm.) The strongest, the Prime (or Kopfhieb, "head cut" at the center of the opponent's crown) still has a good chance of succeeding.

Given the reactive dynamics of a bout, feints are still a valid part of the system.

Roux's system was practiced from a loose side stance, right foot pointing at one-o'clock, left foot at ten-o'clock, placed at a comfortable distance with the body weight resting in the center. Depending on the distance between the fencers (regulated by the local rules of Comment) a step forward could be made for the attack, but was not necessary.

Most masters of the late 19th century were students of Roux'... like Fehn, Schulze, or his own son, Ludwig Caesar Roux... or at least were imprinted heavily by his method, like the Seemann-Kahne brothers.

Schläger III has done away with the reactive offensive parries: it has focused on the completion of cover, so that something resembling of a "universal parry" is formed by the constant motion of blade and arm.

Feints have widely been contracted into "doubled cuts" (Doppelhiebe) and moulinet-like combinations (Schleifen) that are no longer intended to prompt a reaction of the opponent, but to play with elements of time and blade position. The first to publish this system is Adolf Meyer (1906 and 1910)⁵.

Here's how you can experience the underlying difficulty first hand: Take a mask and hang it from a wall at the same height as your face. Take a saber, grasp the handle between thumb and index finger, measure three feet between you and the wall, and place yourself squarely in front of the mask. Make sure your shoulders are parallel to the wall.

Now raise your right arm straight up, so that the point of your saber, your wrist and shoulder are perfectly aligned in one vertical line, with your upper arm firmly pressing against your right ear. This position corresponds to the steile Auslage, or Steep Ward.

From the steile Auslage, move your upper arm from your ear across your mouth without breaking the perfectly straight line between point and shoulder. Your forearm should lie diagonally across your left eye, your fist should be at the utmost upper left position you can possible achieve... while your shoulders are still aligned in a perfect parallel line to the wall.

From this awkward position, break the straight line between shoulder and point at your wrist as you try to hit the upper left of the mask with the first eight inches of the cutting edge. I repeat. The cutting edge. Not the flat. Not at an oblique angle. And don't move those shoulders!

As your blade makes contact with the mask, you have realized the most important aspect of the offensive-defensive sequence: the system's underlying concept of attacking from continuous cover.

Because in this position, you cannot be hit. Your blade provides a barrier against cuts from above, your arm, still pressed across your mouth, will block any cut directed at the left side of your face. (Your right side, or the katholische Seite, is relatively unprotected against the opponent's low tierce, also called a Spicker. Lucky for you, almost all local Mensur Comments outlaw hits aimed at this unprotectable area...)

But at this point, the Comment's other requirement kicks in, forcing you to leave this safe zone: During a bout, the point of the blade has to be kept in constant motion. This means you have to move on, back into a defensive position, without providing an opening.

Since you still are standing in front of your mask, shoulders parallel to the wall, back and legs straight, and head held up proud and aggressively, with the saber balanced between thumb and index finger, execute a tight locking movement around the surface of the mask... as if you're turning a key to lock a door.

During this locking movement (Abdrehen, lit., "to turn off"), the cutting edge of your blade will turn from pointing downward to pointing upward. (To practice, try hitting the left side of the mask with the cutting edge, then execute the locking motion, culminating with a slight tap of the false edge against the right upper side of the mask. This last tap, of course, is only for practice purposes.)

In this process, your shoulders remain aligned with the wall, your arm remains straight, and your fist is firmly planted at the utmost left.

As your blade "turns off", you are creating an opening: The right-hand top of your scalp lies open to an attack in high tierce or Hacke. This means that as you turn your wrist, your upper arm needs to rapidly slide back, across your mouth to rest against your right ear. This time around, however, you do not go back into the steile Auslage. But as your biceps hits your ear, you drop the point of your blade further down the left hand side of the mask while pulling your elbow back and up.

This ward position, called verhängte Auslage or hanging guard, protects the right side of your face and head by your arm's vertical line between shoulder and elbow. Your forehead and crown are covered by your lower arm and saber guard, which points diagonally toward the enemy's right-hand side. Your blade, pointing downward and forward diagonally to where the opponent's shoulders would be, protects the left side of your face.

Again, if you're doing this process right, you cannot be hit.

From the verhängte Auslage, you have two options to keep going (hey, it's the rules!). Depending if you're using a bell-guard or a basket-hilt Schläger, your next attempt at landing a high tierce involves the following:

1. Bell-guard Schläger: A push forward into your guard that again aligns your arm in a straight diagonal that covers mouth, left eye, and brings the guard into the utmost left position as you drop your edge into the high quart position.

2. Basket-hilt Schläger: You continue dropping your point through the verhängte Auslage into a full circle that carries the point rapidly behind your back. As the point travels to about shoulder high, you use the rotational impetus of the movement to launch your arm back into the diagonal as your point hits in high quarte.

All the while, you remain standing proud and straight. Because while the Schläger system lacks the athletic emphasis, there is a mental, a moral element to it. Your stance is static, you don't work with distance, and rather than avoiding a hit by a quick reflexive movement you stand and take it rather than break your pattern. The only body part you're allowed to move is your sword arm. Move your head, duck, twitch, attempt to dodge... and your own people will call the bout.

Because in this system, any superfluous movement is not only useless, but terminally dangerous to you. In the very fast, very rapid exchange of cuts, you need to get to viscerally understand the rhythm of the bout, consider your actions before you act and accept the consequences no matter what they may be.

Allow your arm to fall forward as you shift you biceps from your ear across your mouth, and you create an opening in your left cheek. Allow your lower arm to droop in the verhängte Auslage, and you create an opening on top and in the back of your head. Or allow the point of your blade to drop too low as you go back into the verhängte, and you remove the block that protects your left side. If you present the full surface of the flat blade to the opponent's attack (rather than the angled cutting edge) and the force of the cut will slap the blade across your front, opening the entire left side of the head to the attack.

Timing (Tempo) is a more complex issue. There are two Tempi in Schläger, the Wechseltempo (where the opponents alternate attack and defence) and A-Tempo (where both fencer's attacks and recoveries occur simultaneously.

Tempo proper is the time frame during which the blade moves from the hanging guard (Point A) through its full extension during the attack (Point B) back into its position at Point A. Both point A and point B represent stages of full cover. It is the points during the motion that can be exploited for openings.

This concept is, of course, identical with that of the stop cut or time thrust, and as such not only germane to fencing, but to most combative arts.

The challenge in Schläger is to find the exact point in time to attack. This can be achieved mostly by accelerating or decelerating elements in your own cut sequence. While the rules call for the point to be in constant motion, Schleifen (moulinets) can be used to decelerate your own Tempo under cover until the opening occurs. By varying the angle of the circle following the Abdreh-movement, you can gain time. The same goes for doubling cuts for which you do not return into the hanging guard.

Like most classic fencers, I was somewhat appalled by the lack of grasp of the system exhibited. Most local rules today have prohibitions against low cuts (Low Quarte) and Time gain via doubled cuts for the lower skill levels. Unfortunately, this has resulted in wide ignorance of the combative fundamentals of the system. (I've repeatedly compared this attitude to only using first and second gear while driving down an Interstate.)

Fencing time and the exploitation thereof is no longer taught expressly, but depends widely on the intuition of the fencer. Blade control, adjustment of circle movements, or even alternatives to the hanging guard for last-cut combinations are widely unknown these days.

In fact, for the first time in two centuries, the system faces the lack of extinction, not for lack of practitioners, but for lack of understanding.