HEMA is OK

Tl;dr: The artists at Landsknecht Emporium deliver again and very kindly indulged my request for a design that I cared about. Detailed pictures and a short video at the end of the post. Why Get a Messer   I’ve been without a good messer for fencing since I started fencing back in 2016. Messer fencing was pretty fundamental to German fencing culture for the period I focus on, and the first club I started at - bafflingly, in my opinion - doesn’t teach messer to beginners, so it flew under my radar for the first few years of my fencing “career.” Earlier this year I decided to rectify that, and got in touch with Tamas at Landsknecht Emporium to talk about a custom piece I could use for fencing. I wanted a thick-edged blunt version of their “Gottfried” model with some customizations - longer pommel, slightly wider cross, slightly larger nagel, a “fuller” on the grip slabs, and a few other things. We figured out money and got the order in.  I wanted one because in 15th century Germany, p

Today's article is provided by guest author Bastian Koppenhöfer, and published here with his kind permission. I assisted with editing. Bastian holds a M.A. from University of Mainz in Germany. Unlike other articles on this blog, written by me, this article is © 2021 Bastian.  A thing of beauty.

For readers who did not already know, I am moving from Minneapolis to upstate New York in the next month or so. Since I have in the past taken care of some of the admin work for the Minneapolis Amateur Swordfighting Association (MASA), my departure means that my clubmates may want someone else to take over the admin side of things.  This article addresses one element of this: Club insurance. There are other elements of club admin involved in running a club - organizational management (types of entities, who is in charge); finances and taxes; day-to-day operations (managing gear, paying bills, collecting dues); “What kind of club you want to be,” and club culture. I may write future articles addressing other elements.  So, while I could write up a guide that is exclusively for an audience of my MASA clubmates, it strikes me that this is also a potentially useful “public interest” topic, so it is written that way. Note this concerns only clubs in the United States - the insurance and adm