16 June 2009
 
The Pappenheimer

 
 (The Hilt of a Pappenheimer Blade)
 
Make no mistake, there are still some classically trained people out there, and not everyone has drunk of the Kool-Aid of what passes for popular culture these days.
 
I was minded of the transience of that when I returned to the daily crossword puzzle on a week of commuting by Metro last year. I had absolutely no clue as to the answers of some of the hints. Stars of popular shows and media I suppose are the most perishable of popular society, followed quickly by the technology that follows.
 
 Never had an x-Box, nor know much about the games that play on them. I can only guess at the spelling of a product that is pronounced “why,” and seems to be of vaguely Oriental origin, even if the platform functions with western chip technology.
 
I long ago embraced Sony in exchange for RCA, and this is not a Xenophobic reaction, though I am going to have a problem with the car thing. I was impressed when I was handed the keys to a Ford Focus at the rental desk at Detroit Metro yesterday.
 
Things had been going altogether too well. The massive Bluesmobile had lumbered predictably to Reagan National airport; the sun shone as advertised, and the assemblage of aviation parts had  functioned with efficiency to deliver me to Michigan.
 
My Secretary had screwed up the car reservations, and I was quite peeved at him, he being me, of course, and feared momentarily I would spend my morning dragging my bags along Renta-Car Row near Middlebelt Road.
 
A kindly woman behind the counter took pity on me, and united me with the marvel of technology that is the Focus.
 
It has many of the things I like in a car, and some that I explicitly do not. Driving west of I-94, a woman’s voice came from the speakers to tell me that a vehicle diagnostics test was available if I selected “Yes” and I looked blankly at the dashboard for a button labeled with that word, which was not to be found.
 
It has a lot of features I don’t understand, but it is efficient. The shape of the car is small and slippery, to the extent that driving with the window down, as I do in my autos, is more like riding the Harley, only quieter.
 
I imagine I will have to get with the program sooner or later. Oil is up again, according to the CMU-Mount Pleasant repeater broadcast of NPR, for the forty-second day. Somewhere, someone thinks the recession must be ending.
 
As we lurch into the future, we are going to leave some things behind, and that may account for the odd and unsettling acts of rear0guard violence that have been erupting. The past does not want to die, and as it does, won’t go quietly.
 
I hope the Ford Motor Company survives, and it occurred to me this morning, rising in the little town by the Bay, that as it passes away, some will save some vestiges that matter.
 
So it is with the matter of the swords.
 
A buddy spent a long time in Japan, for example, and took up an association with Kendo, the martial art that uses simulated katana blades made of bamboo and heavy padding. He was pretty good, for a white guy, and met several locals who were trying to preserve the art, despite the fierce post-war suppression of the Samurai class.
 
It turns out that there are two distinct clans (at least) who have carried the tradition of the Japanese sword; a guild that forges the astonishingly capable blades from a delicate cocktail of blended molten metal, and a clan that polishes and sharpens them to incredible cutting devices that whisper with surgical efficiency.
 
The people he knew were of the sword-polishing line, passed down from father to son over a thousand years. Imagine a family business like that. The loss of the war had dislocated the tradition. In a series of delicate overtures, the family approached my pal to see if he was interested in being adopted, and inducted into the mysteries of the polished blade.
 
There could be no higher honor, I would think, although the baggage that goes along with that sort of thing could interfere with a Naval career, and eventual retirement in the States.
 
I hope the polishers found someone to sign on for the journey. It would be a shame to see a thousand-year tradition extinguished for lack of interest.
 
Of course, he could have learned enough to ply his trade back home. Another friend happens to have a classically trained daughter, who was in need of a sharpening just this last week.
 
She is a willowy young woman with quick wit and agile synapses. She has been fencing for years as an athletic art, but has, of late, taken the pursuit of the blade to the next level. She is currently under the instruction of Master John and others from the Society for Creative Anachronism.  
 
She had been interested in turning her blunt-tipped sporting Spanish rapier into the real thing by having it sharpened professionally. This is not something you can attempt with a file in the garage. This is a matter for professionals.
 
Her sword has a name: “El Divinio.” All the good ones do. They have their own personalities.
 
As a graduation present, my pal identified a local purveyor of the antique art called The Prince of Blades. He drove over for a consultation; she is going off into the world to start a career in the family shadow business, and it seemed to all concerned that a sharpened blade might be an acceptable alternative to a handgun in providing point-defense for a young woman’s apartment.
 
Elegant and efficient.
 
Accordingly to my pal, The Prince of Blades did not live up to the name. It was a tiny mom-and-pop knife-and-sword shop, with the usual stuff:  butterfly knives, old cavalry sabers, the odd decorative battle axe.  They had promised my pal over the phone that they'd be willing to sharpen a sword ("while you wait") and he had a promise to keep with his daughter.
 
When he got there, the Prince drew El Divinio from its scabbard, sighted down the blade, and remarked quietly "This is a rapier.  I'd be glad to put an edge on the blade, but its not meant to have one.  With a rapier, you use the point." 
 
They then agreed he would sharpen the point instead.  And so he did, point and about two inches down each edge.  As he worked, he kept up his commentary.  "This is hard steel.  Carbon steel.  This is a full-tang sword.  This is a fully-functional sword.  Keep it lightly oiled." 
 
My pal told him they called it the Spanish Sword, since it looked like something a Hidalgo would carry aboard a galleon at Cadiz for the English Expedition.  "More French," the Prince replied.  Rapier is a French word, true.
 
When he got it home and reported out to his daughter, she agreed with the Prince of Blades, noted that an edge was useful on a rapier "for drawing cuts" but was satisfied with what he'd done. 
 
The discussion then shifted to her ambition for a third sword in addition to the swept-hilt rapier (rather heavy) and her Epee (a light, bell-guarded practice sword).  A girl can never have too many swords. 
 
Apparently she has her heart set on a Pappenheimer, which is a 17th century swept-hilt rapier with an extra guard to protect the fingers. An accident on the fencing mat last summer taught her the importance of that.  Ideally, the Pappenheimer would have a little narrower blade than The Fortuneteller, her first sword, and be just a little lighter.  Good balance, of course.
 
In addition to being a cracker-jack analyst, my pal is a student of history. He asked his daugther if she knew the origin of the name.  She didn't. 
 
"Sounds like a place name.  Austrian maybe," she ventured. 
 
All good questions are opportunities for learning. There followed immediate recourse to Google.  Turns out the sword is named for Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim, a Bavarian nobleman who was, in the end, a Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire. 
 
Pappenheim was responsible for the horrific sack of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War.  He commanded the Imperial cavalry at Lutzen in 1632, and was killed by a cannon ball as he sought out his nemesis, Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus.  The two died within moments of each other.
 
I wish The Intern could have been there for the discussion- she is staying at Big Pink for the duration of her summer’s employment with the State Department. She is another of those very smart young women who is marching off into this very different word. She is not much for swordplay, but she is a hell of a good horsewoman, not one of the dilettantes you see cantering about the barns of Northern Virginia.
 
I asked her about why she was studying German one time, and she said it was because they were the best riders, and had the best horses. Simple, really.
 
She is good enough to be translating things for the State Department this summer, and she could have read us all Schiller's “Wallenstein." 
 
It is a challenge in the Gothic script original, as were the source documents displayed at the Holocaust Museum when we visited last Sunday.
 
It was in the manner of a tribute, and an act of solidarity after the murder of a security guard last week.
 
It is definitely not one of those uplifting ways to spend a morning, but it is one of those things one should do, and ensure that the next generation knows. It is a responsibility.
 
There is a concomitant responsibility there as well. An alert and armed population can never be taken for the same sort of ride to the abyss. Or maybe I am wrong about that; maybe they would drive. I don’t know.
 
I do know that courage may be underrated in these times, but one should endeavor to remember one’s history. Schiller recalled the words of Wallenstein, who wrote to Pappenheim, urgently recalling the Bavarian's detached force for the coming battle with the Protestant Swede. 
 
He needed Pappenheim's curiassiers to keep the Finnish cavalry off the Imperial infantry.  Instead - like another German horse-soldier, Prince Rupert of the Rhine - Pappenheim rode straight for the heart of the foe.
 
"Daran erkenn' ich meine Pappenheimer."
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com