An advantage of studying the Radaellian lineage that I often emphasise is the number of treatises published by the graduates of Radaelli's fencing master's school and their students. In contrast, the comparatively few treatises penned by those who graduated from Parise's school (speaking here only of those who had not previously attended the Radaelli's Milan school) has resulted in some confusion and mystery surrounding the fencing those graduates would go on to teach during their careers. Choosing to deal with this broader topic at a later date, today I will instead share a 'mini-treatise' written not by one such graduate, but by his star pupil Gustav Casmir. The work in question is a well-illustrated 55-page article of his, simply entitled 'Fechten', which formed one chapter of the German sporting encyclopedia Das grosse illustrierte Sportbuch, likely published in 1908 or the latter half of 1907.1
Due to Casmir's association with a graduate of the Rome master's school, in this case Ettore Schiavoni, his short treatise is a critical data point in understanding what fencing methods the Italian military masters were propagating once they left the army and thus how closely they adhered to the officially-sanctioned method they had been taught.
The Work
As insinuated earlier, although I have called this work an article, its structure is much more similar to an average treatise of the time, despite its short length. Casmir begins with a historical summary of German fencing and a discussion of the health benefits of fencing, particularly for German youths. He then starts the technical material with foil, which appears to be largely based on Masaniello Parise's method.2
Some notable deviations from Parise's method, however, are first evident in the body carriage. Parise's slight rear-weightedness is not present here (perhaps even being slightly forward-weighted), and he advocates full torso lean when lunging.
Casmir describes the same four traditional parries as Parise, but calls the half-circle parry Quint (5th), which was another common name for it among northern Italians,3 and although he prescribes parry of 3rd to be performed with the nails down like Parise, for the thrust by glide in 3rd he advises to supinate the hand during the arm extension. Further northern Italian influence is also apparent in his inclusion of the coupé and the counteraction, actions typically excluded in Neapolitan fencing. He finishes this section with 10 conventional exercises, which he recommends even advanced fencers to do every lesson.
Although the influence of Parise's method is clearly apparent in the foil section, Casmir's sabre section is instead predominantly Radaellian. He starts by describing the typical Radaellian grip (albeit with the photo showing the hand slightly further down than usual) and then immediately moves on to the six exercise molinelli, which are to be done standing upright and with the blade moved 'not from the wrist, but mainly from the elbow'. When speaking about the cuts a few pages later, he states that in order to ‘master the weapon completely’, the wrist must not be used at all, as the muscles used in wrist actions are weaker than those which move the forearm.
The two guards he describes as the most common are 2nd and 3rd, with the former being the usual Radaellian 2nd and the latter being a lower and more retracted 3rd, closer to Parise's. As a result of this retracted 3rd (and also retracted 4th), Casmir does not include separate low 3rd and low 4th parries/invitations, but still includes the other usual parries of 1st, 5th, 6th, and 7th.
An interesting deviation from the other Radaellian authors can be seen in Casmir's section on cuts, where for the cut by molinello to the head he advises to add a slicing motion to the cut, either by drawing the arm slightly after making impact or doing the cut with a slightly bent arm and then extending it. Similarly, the cut to the abdomen is done with a drawing motion across the body before returning to guard.
Like for foil, Casmir also gives 10 example conventional exercises for sabre, which should be done with students divided into groups according to their skill level. After describing all the other actions such as glides, beats, counterattacks etc., the work is concluded with advice on bouting and rules for assigning blame in double touches.
Gustav Casmir
Born in Mikołajki, Poland, on 5 November 1872, Gustav Casmir began his adult life as a primary school teacher, first teaching in north-eastern Poland before later moving to Berlin. It was here in 1898, at the Berliner Fechtclub, that Casmir had his first exposure to fencing, learning under the recently immigrated Italian master Ettore Schiavoni. His late start to fencing appeared to matter little for his skill development, with his first competitive success taking place at a large international épée tournament in Ostend in 1904, finishing in 2nd place. Later that year he would be the only European to compete in the fencing event at the Olympic Games in St. Louis. Although he did not win any medals there, two years later he would take home two gold and two silver medals at the 1906 Athens Olympics.4
After his triumphant return to Germany Casmir became a fencing master, first acting as Schiavoni's assistant at the Berliner Fecht-Club then moving to Dresden the following year to teach at the Dresdner Fechtclub. Despite all this promise, however, Casmir tragically died of a 'serious brain disease' in late 1910 at the age of 38.
Ettore Schiavoni
With so many notable figures throughout the history of Italian fencing, it can often be tempting to make light of their physical appearances. Whether it be their immaculately moustache or their distinctive dress, for us these features can help to not just differentiate the many faces, but also humanise them. To his contemporaries, Ettore Schiavoni's most striking feature was without doubt his height. Standing at 190 cm tall, as he began gaining the attention of the Italian sporting press he would earn himself the affectionate nickname Sua Lunghezza (literally 'His Length' or 'His Longness'), a play on the typical royal honorific Sua Altezza ('His Highness').5 With the average male height in Italy at the time being less than 165 cm, it is easy to see how Schiavoni would have stood out from the crowd even before he started fencing.
But it was not just his physical appearance that made him worthy of note; at a tournament in city of Bergamo in 1897, Schiavoni's display of skill and courtesy made a great impression on journalist Roderico Rizzotti, who in his report on the tournament gave the following light-hearted and rather endearing praise for Schiavoni:
Exceptionally tall in person, a young man with handsome eyes and black moustache, affable and always courteous, Schiavoni immediately wins the sympathies of the spectators when he steps onto the piste. But what really endears him, aside from his indisputable merits as a fencer, are some of his brilliant and inimitable exclamations of apology which he bursts into when he thinks the thrust did not hit the target well. In these exclamations, in his 'low, sorry, or rather, passé, outside' or in his 'no no no no, not at all', said with dizzying speed and following all the tones of the musical scale, one senses such an instinct of generosity and chivalry and such an air of childishness to make one want to climb onto a chair to...shake his hand.The amateur Francesco Galli, who is not only talented, but also a very witty young man, said that Schiavoni seemed to him like an elongated child. And indeed he is, in the flattering sense of the phrase.Schiavoni is one of the few masters who does not make the jurors sweat blood when a pool is in progress; he is one of the few who can submit himself serenely and philosophically to the jury's verdicts, whatever they may be.Although it may not seem like it, this is great praise we give to Schiavoni, and with it the hope that other masters will have to imitate his example.6
Born in the southern Italian city of Taranto, Schiavoni's towering height and build made him an obvious top choice for the grenadiers. Having achieved the rank of sergeant, he was accepted into the Military Fencing Master's School in September 1888, where he was a student of the great master-of-masters Carlo Pessina. After graduating in 1890, he served as the fencing master of the 1st grenadiers regiment for several years before being called back to the Master's School, this time as an instructor.7
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| Schiavoni with his young students, 1910 |
It would not be long, however, before he followed in the footsteps of many of his colleagues to find fame and fortune abroad. In late 1897 he left for Vienna, then a popular crossroads for Italian fencing masters thanks largely to the pioneering work of Luigi Barbasetti, before eventually making his way further north and settling in Berlin, finding employment at the Berliner Fechtclub from September 1898. Here Schiavoni would spend the rest of his career, taking under his wing many of the top German fencers of the time, including a young Erwin Casmir, future Olympic medallist and nephew of Gustav Casmir. Schiavoni died of a heart attack in Berlin on 30 July 1930, aged 62.8
1 Das grosse illustrierte Sportbuch (Leipzig: J. J. Arnd, [1908?]). The proposed publication date is based on the fact that throughout several of the articles containing various sporting statistics and results, the last year to be included is 1907.↩
2 Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884).↩
3 cf. Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per la scherma di punta (Milan: Gaetano Baroffio, 1872); Giordano Rossi, Manuale Teorico-Pratico per la Scherma di Spada e Sciabola (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard, 1885); Luigi Barbasetti, Das Stossfechten (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1900).↩
4 Manlio, 'Il Torneo d'Ostenda', Gazzetta dello Sport, 12 August 1904; 'Casimir', Nemzeti Sport, 12 November 1910, 13; 'Allerlei', Sport im Bild, 18 November 1910, 1289-90.↩
5 Some early examples of this nickname being used: La Gazzetta dello Sport, 9 December 1898, 2; Gaetano, 'Da Napoli: Accademia Nazionale', La Gazzetta dello Sport, 18 April 1900, 2. Regarding his height, see 'Sport: Santelli vivóakadémiája', Magyar Ujság, 25 December 1897, 8.↩
6 Roderico Rizzotti, 'Ancora del Torneo di Bergamo', La Gazzetta dello Sport, 6 September 1897.↩
7 Giovanni Corvetto, "Circolare N. 124. - Corso normale d'istruzione presso la scuola magistrale militare di scherma. - (Segretariato generale). - 16 agosto," Giornale Militare 1888: parte seconda, no. 38 (18 August 1888): 461; 'Tre Campioni della Scherma italiana', La Stampa Sportiva, 2 November 1902, 11; 'La scherma a Berlino', Il Littoriale, 13 October 1928, 3; 'La morte di un celebre schermitore della nostra Provincia', Voce del Popolo, 9 August 1930, 5.↩
8 'Nécrologie', L'Escrime et le Tir, August 1930, 21.↩
