Munich town guard swords

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Darijan R.

Hi,

I'm looking for stats on this type of sword; legths, weights, PoBs, blade thickness, distal tampering etc.

If you have any info, or just pictures, of particular pieces that you can/want to share, please do so here.

Much appreciated!

I think stats and the detail you seek is plentiful in all the advertising on these swords being reproduced by several of the major firms, in fact it is difficult to find such data online without considerable material on these commercial versions.

As I noted, these swords for the Munich Town Guard are of understandable interest with the rarity of authentic examples. Apparantly many of the number of these were deaccessed from their static holdings in Bavaria many years ago, and most of them are in various museums now with occasional examples at auction.

The hilt on these is of the form shown in "The Rapier and the Smallsword" by AVB Norman (1980) Hilt #57, identified as being of 1585-1640 . These seem significantly produced by Wolfgang Stantler (crowned vertical 'ST' stamp at ricasso), though others sometimes have 'TS' initials (either Wilhem or Clemens Tesche). This is interesting as Tesche's were Solingen makers and some references seem to think these were all made in Munich.
Some have a Munich arsenal stamp, 'HZ'.

In Wallace Collection (Mann, 1962) example A612 discusses these type hilts and their makers with cross references to other related data in this resource.

Hopefully this might provide informational sources for readers here beyond the commercial material concerning the many reproductions offered online.