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Old 19th January 2014, 03:33 PM   #25
Matchlock
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
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Another group of five haquebuts, of similar shape but varying in size - among them two average haquebuts (German: ganze Haken), weighing about 8 and 12 kg respectively, and two huge and heavy wall guns weighing ca. 20 kg (German: Doppelhaken) - , was discovered standing upright on a board on the wall of a long and narrow bricked-up room (!) in the Castle of Kronburg, near Memmingen, Bavaria, after WW II when the castle had to be restored. They all retained their original ash wood full stocks, the buttstocks shaped exactly like the ones illustrated in the Ingenieurkunst- u. Wunderbuch, ca. 1520, Weimar, cod. 328, fol. 213r, and by Erhard Schön, Nürnberg, 1535 (scans attached). The barrels do not have rear sights but there are bead foresights on the muzzle section.

What is most remarkable about those five guns is the fact that the barrels have retained their original sockets, even with remains of their original tiller stocks in those sockets, and thus they were fully stocked in ash in the early 1520's!

Those haquebuts were, together with books and other arms from Schloss Kronburg, sold at auction with Venator KG, Cologne, 30-31 October 1953, lots 8-12. Each of them was estimated at 250 DM but they went way below that limit. A copy of that sales catalog is in my library.
I have succeeded in tracing back the present whereabouts of four of them. The two shortest of them were bought in 1953 by a Berlin collector, Herr Paul, and after his death I acquired one of them in 2001:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...uebut+kronburg

Meanwhile, the two huge samples are in the collection of a friend of mine in Austria, while the fourth haquebut, the smallest of them all, is in a German private collection. One was at sale with Hermann Historica's, Munich, 20. May 2010, lot 1010, the other came through a German dealer in 2009.

All of them are preserved in fine, 'untouched' and heavily patinated condition, with all the edges of the wood still very crisp, and the barrels retaining much of their original red lead minium coat of paint.
The sample in my collection is the second smallest of the four.
Overall length 1.34 m, barrel length without socket 67 cm, socket 22 cm, maximum outer diameter 6.0 cm, minimum o.d. 4.0 cm, bore 25 mm, weight 12 kg.

One of the originally five haquebuts is lost.


Best,
Michael
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Last edited by Matchlock; 19th January 2014 at 07:13 PM.
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