Paulus Hector Mair

Paul Hector Mair, also called Paul, (* 1517 in Augsburg, † December 10, 1579 ibid ) was a clerk in the service of the city of Augsburg, from 1541 also city treasurer and from 1545 also purser.

Life

He collected old weapons and fencing manuals (eg he bought in 1544 Jörg Wilhalms handwriting, in 1556 the Codex Wallerstein ), and finally came up with the idea to hold the " fineness of teaching" in a new, all previous surpassing compendium. He hired two experienced fencers who had to verify and refine all known techniques it until they could be paint copies in perfected form. This company proved to be enormously expensive, and he gave it most of the wealth and income of his family. As a painter Jörg Breu the Younger, he engaged, whose presence is secured in Augsburg from 1543. Mair was a well-known figure in Augsburg, and gave elaborate parties and receptions, partly funded by embezzlement from the city treasury. Discover these were after a dispute with a ministerial servant, after which the books were checked, and in 1579 he was 62 years old, hanged as a thief.

Three versions of his compendium are received, all in two volumes; a Latin version, a German version and a synoptic Latin- German. All three originated after 1542, probably from 1543 or 1544, the years for which the presence of Jörg Breu is secured in Augsburg.

• Austrian National Library in Vienna, cod. Vindob. 10825 and 10826, Latin- German, 270 343 sheets.
• Dresden, book Museum of the Saxon State Library MSCR. Dresd. C 93 and MSCR. Dresd. C 94, by 1542, two - volume compendium, 244 328 sheets, German.

Also, get a shorter, later handwriting, made to records of Anton Rast, the Mair had acquired in 1552. Rast ( † 1549) was swordmaker in Nuremberg and probably identical with one mentioned in 1522 captain of the Marx Brothers.

• Augsburg, city archives, treasures B2 Imperial City, 1553, 110 leaves, illustrated by the painter Heinrich Vogtherr.

The private Amberger Collection in Baltimore, Maryland, also includes a 17 -page fragment of an illustrated manuscript of fencing that can be assigned Mairs environment. While the illustrations are similar to those published in Egenolph woodcuts for the most part, the original incorrect assignment of Ms. Dürer, the weapons and also for an illustration not shown in Egenoplph out that it is the copy of an earlier, possibly Dürer accessible manuscript could act.