Due to a steady influx of Italian fencing masters in the first half of the 20th century, Germany was particularly fertile ground for the spreading of Radaellian sabre. The text I am sharing today is one of many products of this expansion, this being a short German-language sabre treatise written by one Walther Meienreis titled Das Säbelfechten mit dem leichten Säbel auf Hieb und Stich ('Cut and thrust sabre fencing with the light sabre'), published in Leipzig in 1914.
Meienreis' sabre book was published alongside a separate foil volume of similar length, which I have yet to obtain an original copy of, but the sabre material alone is interesting enough on its own thanks to its strong close adherence to Radaellian theory. Meienreis was likely familiar with Barbasetti's work, as he makes use of the term pattinando (advance lunge) which was not used by other Italian authors, and the photos showing the various sabre positions are more characteristic of Barbasetti's posture than, say, Masiello, whose work was also well known in Germany by this time thanks to the work of Luigi Sestini.
As per the title page of this book, Walther Meienreis was a university-trained engineer. Almost nothing else is known about him aside from the fact that he was born in 1877 (see portrait above) and that by the time he published his works he was a lieutenant in the German reserve army, having previously served in the Landwehr, and likely lived in Berlin. He was active in the local fencing scene, particularly military tournaments, and even took part in the épée and sabre events (both individual and team) at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.1 I have found no mentions of him after 1914 aside from advertisements for his books, so it is possible that he was one of the many many casualties of the Great War.
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1 Sport im Bild, 17 December 1909, 1387; Les escrimeurs à la Vème olympiade a Stockholm 1912 (Stockholm: W. Tullberg, 1913), 21; "Das II. Armee-Fecht-Turnier," Sport im Bild, 2 January 1914, 20–1.↩
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