Johannes Liechtenauer
Biography
Johannes Liechtenauer (Hans Lichtenauer, Lichtnawer) was a German fencing master of the late fourteenth century, and the fountainhead of the tradition that dominated fencing in the Empire for two hundred years — the Kunst des Fechtens. Of his life almost nothing is recorded: the only account is the note of the anonymous compiler of the Nuremberg Hausbuch (MS 3227a, our earliest witness), who says that Liechtenauer "learnt and mastered the art in a thorough and rightful way — but he did not invent it; rather he travelled and searched through many lands for the sake of this rightful and true art."
What he left is not a book but a poem: the Zettel — the "Record" — a mnemonic verse epitome of the whole art, written by his own account "in hidden and disguised words, so that not everyone shall grasp or understand it." The verses index an oral teaching; a fifteenth-century industry of glossators (the compiler of 3227a, Sigmund ain Ringeck, pseudo-Peter von Danzig) grew up to unlock them, and the masters of the Liechtenauer society carried the art from Nuremberg to Krakow.
The Zettel covers three arts in one program: the long sword unarmored (Bloßfechten), fencing with lance and sword on horseback (Roßfechten), and the judicial duel in harness with the shortened sword (Kampffechten). The doctrinal claims are traced verse by verse in the tactical groupings.
The Five Words
Where Fabris frames his system through four guards and Fiore through four animal virtues, Liechtenauer frames his through five words — the vocabulary the Zettel itself calls "the single wellspring of all art."
Act first, in a way that must be answered. Every art in the Zettel opens with its flagship of the Vor: the Zornhau's point, the fore-thrust, the fore-grip.
Not defeat but a position: exploit his committed action — travel after his miss, overrun his low attack, set his thrust aside in one time.
The leverage relation of crossed blades. Strength is treated as information and as target — every match-up against the stronger man is resolved by geometry.
Act within his action, at the moment the bind reveals soft or hard. "Learn the feeling: the word Indes cuts sharply" — perception and technique fused.
The Zettel — four parts
The title rubric, the prose preamble on the hidden and disguised words, and the "Young knight, learn" verse prologue — the program of the whole art.
The Bloßfechten Zettel: the common teaching, the five hews, the seventeen chief pieces, and the conclusion that counts the eight windings.
The twenty-six command-taglines that digest the mounted fencing — a memory palace on parchment, each figure mapped to its dueling verse.
The Roßfechten verses — lance, sword, and wrestling on horseback — and the Kampffechten with the shortened sword for the judicial duel.
The Witnesses
No autograph survives; the Zettel lives in the codices of the tradition, from the Nuremberg Hausbuch (ca. 1390s) to late sixteenth-century heirloom copies. The principal witnesses below; the full inventory, families, and variant loci are on the manuscript comparison page.
Treatise
Our study covers the complete Zettel as columned on the Wiktenauer concordance: 68 rows across the four parts, translated fresh from the public-domain transcriptions (Rome as base text, variants from the other witnesses), with every witness's original switchable per row, and the analysis suite alongside.
Research sections
Preface, long sword, mounted figures, and the duel — row by row: our translation with variant notes, and every witness's transcription.
Vor/Nach/Indes, the four openings, the Krieg, the chase, the duel's escalation ladder — the initiative doctrine traced with verse citations.
The seventeen chief pieces, the five hews as breakers, the 8-windings arithmetic, and the mnemonic technology of the verse itself.
Guards, hews, answers, and vices as an interactive map: every counter relation in the Zettel, verse-attested edges distinguished from the glossators'.
The conclusion's arithmetic laid out singly: the four hangings, how each of the eight windings is entered, and when hew, thrust, or cut is chosen.
The Zettel's vocabulary as doctrine — from Zornhau to the unnamed grip — organised by theme.
The load-bearing terms with fuller treatment and example passages quoted from the manuscripts, original beside translation.
Nineteen transcribed witnesses, 1390–1588: coverage, families, growth layers, variant loci, and the fifteenth-century transmission story.