25 years of Secret Sword History! (Actually, make that 30…)

Just when you thought there couldn’t be anything less interesting than endless Star Wars regressions, here comes The SHotS Origin Story...

Fechtschule America honors Hammerterz Forum: Our crass attempt to cash in on th’ memories

Eighteen years after the first Hammerterz Forum and 12 years after the last issue, Fechtschule America 2012 named three tournaments after this long-forgotten HEMA publication.

And as it happens, we made a spectacular discovery somewhere deep in the vaults of the Amberger Collection.

Coincidence?

About J. Christoph Amberger

This site was created and is being updated by J. Christoph Amberger. Born and raised in Cold-War West Berlin, Germany, he studied in Berlin, Göttingen, Aberdeen and Annapolis and holds an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College Graduate Institute and a J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is an attorney in Baltimore City.

As a member of two German student Corps, he fought 7 sharp Mensuren between 1985 and 1987. He has been fencing competitively since 1984 and today teaches youth teams and adult fencing classes at Baltimore Fencing Center in Timonium, Maryland.

For many years, Amberger actively competed in both épée and saber. He’s been holding the by-now completely underserved rank of ikkyu in Tomiki aikido for decades and swears that any time now, he will start pursuing his black belt again. Having accumulated one of the greatest collections of historical fencing art, weapons, and literature in the United States, Amberger launched Hammerterz Forum in 1994, one of the first journals exclusively devoted to the exploration of historical fencing. Apart from hundreds of articles and dozens of publications, Amberger has published four books, with more in the pipeline.

Among them is The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts, on whose concept this site is based.

A word about SHotS:

FencingClassics/SHotS is privately published. It makes no money at all—and it was never designed to do so. (If you wonder why there’s so many weird ads—that’s the price of using the no-frills WordPress platform..)

That also means we’re not dependent on or accountable to any organization. We don’t care about clicks and views and visitors. We don’t take public money or grants or other handouts of any kind. We pay for our own research. And while we always accept well-argued criticism, we take direction from absolutely no-one: If we’re wrong about something, we’ll fix it. If you like what you read, great. If not: “Buy a helmet, man”, go elsewhere.

Have a question? Want to catch up after long-time-no-see? Point out an error or a stretch of pure B.S. in the painstakingly researched postings? Don’t be shy… just drop him a line or Facebook-friend him.