In einer eMail vom 7/20/2005 2:17:37 AM W. Europe Daylight Time schreibt
smithnugent1@yahoo.com:

Does anyone have an explanation of
why they beat so many others?

Richard Cohen does a great job answering your question in By the Sword.
Basically what Piggy did--he is self-taught and a kind of entrepreneur--was fuse
Soviet bloc methods with a kind of village fascist will-to-power bag of
values, and focus on very young kids, and create a Lord of the Flies environment
in Tauberbischofsheim. So one reason for the spike in German performance has
been an emphasis on a young elite and more disturbingly the idea of an elite
nobody wants to call what it is.

I have fenced them. Described their stuff in the last two FQMs. They have,
the younger ones, little capacity to analyse what they do. The older
ones--and many, many have dropped out--are a different story since they're
pre-Piggy. By the way, the intensity of competition training has 19-year-olds
disillusioned and "retiring" and the persistent ones dropping foil for epee.
"Training sessions" in the local clubs are now reduced to 10-minute very pretty
drills with the Fechtmeister with a handful of newbies, then everybody rushes
out to the machines while the Fechtmeister frolics with his "elite" comers. I
am told that few really want lessons anymore because they are all anxious to
compete. (!!!!) The senior guy here, my age, is a classical trained sabreur
who shows up, never suits up, and he and I sit on a bench occasionally when
I'm huffinf and puffing after a bout and shake our heads. He always tells me
he's going to bring his gear, but never does.

Anyway, the scene here's all into Macht, power, a word they use a lot. That
oughtta clue everybody in big time.The most common tactic is what is I guess
best described as a "rising counter six" metronomically repeated.
Backhanded swats are also common. They attempt in training to retain the old
vocabulary and its ghost of a repertory. Picture this: a kid with foil simply
points his weapon at the ceiling and runs at you. Parries are very, very heavy.
Get ready for big arguments about priority! If you look like you're going
to defeat one, get ready for very bad manners. But the Germans have atrocious
public manners anyhow.

Fencing here has also gone full-tilt into flashy uniforms, hip-hop sock
affectations, and, alas, the old Aryan cult of the body in its
promotionalism--soft porn of pretty male and female fencers in the DFB mag. Since they are not
well-informed of history culture anymore, they do not explicitly recognize
that Macht and bare flesh echo some very unpleasant early 20th century values.
Remember competition fencing is nationalist in origin, and was politicized
here before the war.

I could go on. But one of my potential constituencies is the old timers
classical trained. Down to, oh, 1970 they were and used traditional grips.
Fencing was safe--not genuinely hazardous. In distributing flyers for my new
group and class, I run into them all the time. They are nostalgic for the old
days, perfrom air actions over their shop counters or desks. Beneath or
behind the hype, there's much discontent, both among drop-out fencers and an
educated sector of the public unhappy with what's called the
"Elbonengesellschaft." There is a growing reaction to what's associated with the Generation of
'68 (another influence on fencing, but it too has ideological roots that would
shock its cohort, mostly now Greens and SPD), a yearning for manners, and
the old bourgeois civility and Bildung (more than just education) of which
fencing actually was a part. And real aversion to what they see of sport
fencing. My website explicitly will appeal to the ideas of Goethe (who was indeed a
fencer) and Schiller for a reason. Getting back to definitions briefly: We
seek them in the Aufklaerung--the very bad guys in the recent past and the
68ers both rejected the Enlightenment-- also, wir stehen da, wir kann nicht
anders. (with no apologies to the ghost of Luther).

However, it seems the only real current alternative is historical
re-enactment with a heavy medieval emphasis. That's very German, also with shall we
say early 20th century vibrations? That's the alternative so far because I
don't think it's understood elsewhere that sport fencing is subsidized by the
state--that nationalist competition is a big deal--and a winning young fencer
gets the big euros from there and corporate sponsors. Classical is taught now
mostly by theatrical choreographers. However, there is a handful of groups.
The best is in Passau, and folks come from Vienna to attend.

Bill Leckie
soestfechten or _flanconade@aol.com_ (mailto:flanconade@aol.com)




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