What this 1844 Schläger has to do with the Met’s Arms and Armor Collection!
—by J. Christoph Amberger
More than 30 years ago, in or around 1993, I bought a mid-19th century Schläger at the Maryland Arms & Armor Collectors Show—still the crown jewel of East Coast sword-related events bringing together collectors and historically interested fencers from all over the Eastern United States.
This is a basket-hilt or Korbschläger, more or less pristine and unmarred by the typical defects that come with actual use in the traditional Mensur bouts. While the welded tin inlay for the basket has survived, the fabric swatches featuring the colors of the fraternity were damaged by fire and dirt, to a degree that the original colors could not be ascertained. The weapon came with a matching scabbard—a rarity for weapons of this genre. The blade is of a flattened diamond shape without noticeable taper, terminating with a squared point—just the way it should be.
Much like the 1849 pair of weapons I described here, the weapon bears the maker’s or cutler’s mark “KULL”, with a death head poking up from the tang.
The grip is covered with fine-grain sharkskin. I myself replaced the disintegrating ruins of a leather finger loop with a new one. (I was young and didn’t know any better!) The Stichblatt is engraved “E. Riggs”, with the year “1844/45” (indicating a winter semester), and a fraternity symbol or Zirkel.
The inscription is quite irregular for this type of weapon: The purpose of German fraternity life can be found in eternalizing the names of donors and recipients of gifts in steel or precious metal. It’s highly unusual to omit the name of a donor, which is usually identified applying the formula of “x [donor] s. lb. y [recipient] z. frdl. Erg.” —X seinem lieben Y zur freundlichen Erinnerung: X to his dear Y in friendly remembrance.
Here, we only have a single name (with the initial of the first name, also not studentisch!) and a Zirkel. A Zirkel generally consists of the letters F c v (for vivat, crescat, floreat — “may it live, grow and blossom”) and the first initial of the fraternity’s name, followed by an exclamation mark.
For the longest time, I was unable to identify the corresponding fraternity. For one, there are literally dozens if not hundreds of fraternities that have a “P” integrated in their Zirkel. Also, I had purchased the weapon wayyy before there were appropriate Internet resources that could assist the expatriate connoisseur with readily accessible references. And as additional scrap metal accumulated around this weapons, there was simply no urgency to expedite research.
Thus, the identity of E. Riggs and the mystery fraternity remained, well—a mystery. Until a friendly colleague at a certain Facebook group provided an identification of the fraternity based on the Zirkel, and with that, the location.
The symbol here is that of a short-lived Heidelberg corps (Palatia II) that dissolved in the winter of 1844/45. This association was headed by the a former Senior of the suspended Guestphalia, a Freiherr von Berlichingen, and members of a suspended Corps Rhenania. Members predominantly hailed from Baden.
This was a somewhat combustible time, leading up to the revolution of 1849 — documented in the context of the Heidelberg frats in Samarow’s novel Die Saxo-Borussen. Differences of political opinion, specifically pertaining to progressivist members, resulted in the dissolution of the Corps in the winter semester of 1844/45.
Based on the location, we were now able to track down its owner in the Matrikel of the university of Heidelberg. This was Elisha Riggs, Jr. (1826–1881), a young American born in Philadelphia and more recently of New York City, who had enrolled at Heidelberg in 1845. He probably was not a member of Corps Palatia (his name does not appear in the membership lists and the wording of the dedication is improper and unstudentisch) but he may have received it from a friend who was—or had been. (Although even in this scenario, it was unlikely for a Corps student to not have his generosity memorialized by the formula “X s. lb. E. Riggs”.)
On his return to the States, Elisha dutifully became a prosperous banker in his family’s business of Corcoran & Riggs, later Riggs Bank, which existed until its ignominious end in 2005. This was a bank of some importance. In 1844, while Elisha was still completing his educational Grand Tour through Britain and Germany, the U.S. government allowed Corcoran & Riggs to be the only federal depository in Washington. A year later, they financed Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph and moved into a new headquarters at 1503–1505 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, directly across the street from the United States Department of the Treasury. In 1847, the bank lent $16 million to the U.S. government to pay for the Mexican–American War.
In 1853, Elisha and his brother William Henry Riggs (1837–1924) participated in a moderately famous expedition, the “Central Route to the Pacific, From the Valley of the Mississippi to California” of E. F. Beale and Gwinn Harris Heap.
While Elisha’s and his brother’s names are mentioned, they don’t appear to have been major protagonists on this journey—although the vicissitudes of such trip are easy for moderns to underestimate. (The image above is taken from a copy of the report that is currently on sale at Donald Heald’s exquisite rare books establishment.)
Elisha was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, DC. His correspondence, including that from Britain and Germany in 1844-45, lies unscrutinized at the Library of Congress.
Elisha’s brother William became famous for his collection of old arms and armor, which he ended up donating to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1913. He is considered an influential mentor of American arms and armor maven Bashford Dean. The William Riggs Collection still is a cornerstone of the Met’s A&A exhibit: https://www.metmuseum.org/…/bashford-dean-and…
I may take a day off this summer and look for both the grave and a home associated with the Riggs family that may still exist in Montgomery County!
To keep SHotS culturally relevant, let me put on my Lederhosen and join academia in bewailing “cultural appropriation” by you North American colonizers: A later specimen in my collection, owned by Stanford’s first chemistry professor John Stillman, documents a continuity in “culturally appropriating” of German studentisch usages and traditions by foreign students, which today appears to continue in the staging of “Mensuren” (more properly: Rappierjungen) in HEMA contexts.
The Secret History of the Sword 