As an early student of Luigi Barbasetti after his move to Vienna in 1894, Rudolf Brosch quickly established himself as one of Barbasetti's most avid supporters and soon became an assistant instructor at the Wiener Neustadt school, bringing the new Italian method with him. Along with Heinrich Tenner, another star pupil of Barbasetti, Brosch would assist in translating Barbasetti's manuscript of what would be published in 1899 in Vienna as Das Säbelfechten ('Sabre fencing'), which would serve as the military's new sabre textbook.
The sabre book would be followed a year later by Barbasetti's Das Stossfechten ('Thrust fencing'), an equally impressive although less influential treatise on foil fencing, but this text was not be translated by Brosch. In fact just one year later Brosch would publish his own foil treatise entitled Das Stossfechten italienischer Schule ('Thrust fencing of the Italian school'). Although no publication date is listed in the book itself, a review in the Austrian sporting magazine Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung from 21 July 1901 provides a reliable year of publication.
Although an in-depth comparison of the differences between Barbasetti and Brosch's treatises deserves its own article, it can be noted how Brosch prefers a slightly forward-weighted guard position (as opposed to Barbasetti's suggestion to be slightly rear-weighted), performs parry of 3rd with the nails up, and that his teaching progression on pages 118-9 differs from the structure of Barbasetti's treatise by introducing the parries earlier and blade actions later.
