A Walk in the Black Forest

Of knights, dragons and...

The years after 1945 were the great age of the encyclopedia. e boys were back from overseas, everyone was busy begetting the baby boom, and book salesmen were going door to door convincing prospective parents the best thing they could do for the forthcoming was provide a set of unbelievably heavy volumes that told everything about everything. ey weren’t far wrong. In those days before television, everyone read—at least everyone I knew.

e hallowed Britannica was the standard by which “books of knowledge” were measured. My parents, unable to a ord the Britannica, invested in 14 volumes of Richards Topical Encyclopedia and, frankly, I’m glad they did.

I discovered the row of pristine dark red tomes displayed in the living room at the age of eight, around the same time I was given a copy of Antonia Pakenham’s Robin Hood, and I’ve never looked back. Between e ree Musketeers (unabridged, replete with sex and devilry, at the age of ve) and Robin Hood, I was inculcated with a sense of honor and proper manly behavior, and Richards Topical showed me what I should look like and how I should dress. at, I think, explains everything, and we’ll leave it there.

e Richards volumes were heavily illustrated with black-and-white photographs of swords and halberds from museums, paintings of knightly doings and frames from old movies showing eda Bara rising from the lake brandishing Excalibur. All the Norse sagas were there, and I was entranced by the winged helmets of the Valkyries. I still am. ese images—some now half-forgotten, others still vivid—made a deep impression on my pre-teen psyche because the rst time I came into contact with German Schützen ri es of the golden age, an age that coincided neatly with Richard Wagner’s Ring, Wotan, Siegfried and a variety of toothsome Brunhildes, I was a sitting duck.

From the moment I picked one up, I was smitten. It was not so much its undoubted workmanship and, I was sure, stellar accuracy, as its link with the past. Germans have a propensity for turning tools into totems, whether it’s a ri e, a dagger or a Messerschmidt, and the ri es they used for their ancient pastime of o hand target shooting were especially prone.

Schützen matches trace their history back 500 years to men with crossbows, each town having its club and shooting range. By 1880, they were shooting breechloading ri es, and over the course of the next 35 years these evolved into some of the most mechanically ingenious and artistically lavish rearms ever created outside the court of Louis XIV. e Schützen ri e was designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: shooting o hand at a small target 300 meters away. Anyone studying the origins of ergonomics should take a look at these. While the stocks appear extravagant, they are very carefully crafted to t the shooter’s physique. e elaborate lever provides a place for each nger, there is a thumb rest carved into the stock, and this positions the trigger nger perfectly to caress the set trigger, which can be so nely tuned that it res at the touch of a butter y’s wing. e cheek rest is deep as a pillow, to position the eye for the complex sights, and the buttplate hooks under the arm to provide a counterbalance to the barrel.

From the start of the breech-loading cartridge era, around 1860, until 1914, these ri es evolved using a wide variety of actions. e authors of Alte Scheibenwa en, the three-volume history of Schützen in Germany, believe there may be as many as 300 distinctly di erent actions used. And since these ri es were built one at a time in small shops, each was as individual as a Rembrandt.

Broadly speaking, the actions can be divided into two groups: the Martini and its derivatives, and the “falling blocks” similar to the American Sharps, with the Aydt being the major one. Large factories did play a role. For example, Carl Wilhelm Aydt struck a deal with C.G. Haenel around 1888 to produce ri es using his action. ese were marked Haenel Original Aydt, and until his death in 1923, Aydt personally inspected and test- red each ri e before it left the factory. However, Haenel also sold actions to individual gunmakers, and after the patent expired in 1904, many set out to “improve” on the Aydt, with the result being a half-dozen distinct variations.

German retailers insisted on having their own names on the ri es they sold, so if you see a ri e marked “A. Gesinger, Bremen,” as is the older one in the photograph, that’s the retailer, not the maker. And the maker? Anyone’s guess really. In the years before German proof became mandatory (1894) ri es were sold with few markings. ere was no single large manufacturer of Martini actions, as Haenel was with the Aydt, and there were a dozen identi able variations. e Martini, of course, is a Swiss development that made the original American Peabody action hammerless. e Germans then altered this in any number of ways, some giving it an internal hammer. ere being no standard models, and few old catalogue references, nothing can be classi ed as “factory original.” ere are no standard engraving patterns and few particular features. is forces prospective buyers to fall back on their own knowledge of actions and features, and ability to judge condition.

One thing almost all German Schützen ri es have in common is being easy to dismantle with a minimum of tools. e sights are usually detachable using a clock key, so they can be stored in a protective case. is is the reason many ri es are found today with no sights. e making of double-set triggers became a separate specialty, and these are found with as many as seven levers. e more levers, the more sensitive the trigger. Trigger groups are mounted on a plate, which is also easily detached.

As in America, where target cartridges became gradually smaller (.45, to .38, to .32), so did the German, eventually xing on the 8.15x46R. is cartridge was developed by Adolf Frohn in the 1890s and standardized in 1909. It is remarkably similar to the American .32-40, which came to dominate target shooting in the U.S. around the same time.

All these factors make life di cult for collectors.

As a result, some Schützen ri es might change hands for a few hundred dollars, others for a few thousand, and one or two for many thousand. It can depend on whether the sights are present, which is a big selling point; the sights are hardly standardized either, so nding suitable replacements is di cult. Some ri es might have been damaged and then restored, and in the case of a skillful restoration, it’s di cult to tell.

Estimates are that probably 75,000 ne Schützen ri es were made between 1860 and 1939, when the last Aydt left the Haenel factory—vastly more than the 5,000 or so ne Schützen ri es produced in the U.S. by such as Ballard and Stevens. Of these, as many as half may have perished through neglect, looting or deliberate destruction. Given the history of Germany since 1914, it’s a wonder any survived at all. But that simply makes those that did all the more precious.

Aesthetically, German ri es provide more scope for interest than American ones because of the Teutonic penchant for elaborate stock carving, and the recounting of tales through engraving. On a particular ri e, one might nd the story of William Tell, or Siegfried’s Rhine journey; St. Hubertus and the stag is a popular theme, or any number of village romances. Some is deep relief engraving, some a combination of stippling and carving, with oak leaves, beer barrels and barmaids.

Since the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest in Germany, with collectors’ associations and even Schützenfests similar to the annual gatherings of old. Of course, there has been nothing on the scale of, say, Munich in 1906, when almost 5,000 shooters (and 50,000 visitors in total) gathered in an “Olympic” village built for the occasion, complete with shooting ranges and beer halls. And so far, no one is making commemorative beer steins, medals, banners, targets and even pocket watches for the participants to take home. is paraphernalia of pageantry provides further scope for collectors, or anyone who just wants a few reminders of the past to go along with a lovely ri e.

It’s as pointless to yearn for a return of the great shooting matches as it is to hope for the rebirth of tournaments with knights on horseback. And today, even the encyclopedias of days gone by are a rarity. No more can a nine-year-old smuggle Vol. 13 into his room to marvel at by ashlight, long after he’s supposed to be asleep.

A few years ago, at the Rock Island auction, a father and daughter browsed down the racks. He was a Winchester collector, engrossed in models and factory originality; she was a bored teenager— bored, that is, until they came to a dozen Schützen ri es replete with engraving of dragons and hornblowing Vikings and stocks with carved knightserrant. She brightened up and purred, “Now these are really cool!” ere’s hope yet. S

Shooting editor Wieland’s second childhood began before his rst even ended, and he is now into his third. Or is it his fourth?