Old Hungarian

  There is very little public information -- especially actual measurements -- about old Hungarian training sabres between 1839 and 1896. These two dates are important, because they mark the publication of the first Hungarian fencing manual (1839) and the year when a large international fencing competition was held in Budapest, after which our sabre fencing was completely changed due to the influence of the Radaelli-system.

  So let's summarise what we do know about those practise sabres. First of all several Hungarian manuals describe them, provide us with drawings (Murz (1890), Gerentsér (1944)), sometimes even with a rare photo (Arlow)!

Arlow (1902): Fig. 1 -- Hungarian fencing sabre

  Unfortunately Arlow didn't tell us the exact specification for the (old) Hungarian practise sabres, he just noted the general requirements of fencing sabres used at competitions (total weight: at least 450g, usual blade length: 82-88cm, width at the shell: <17mm) (Page 7-8).

  In 2018 I had a pleasure to visit Árpád Németh's fencing collection, when Miskolc University's library borrowed several items from his magnificient collection, among them four swords. Naturally I was more than glad to measure those swords and share data with other sword enthusiasts. (According to Mr. Németh the first two swords were practise sabres, specifically for duelling, and the third one -- with Weyersberg blade -- was a normal training sabre). 

  Recently I have found an interesting auction lot [1], which looks very similar to Mr. Németh's Weyersberg sword. From the description provided by the auction house: „No marking on the blade. The total length: 99cm. Blade length: 84cm. Blade width measured at the shell is ~1.8cm.” [2] (The point of the blade is simply rounded.) Let's compare these measurements with those of Németh's sabre: blade length - 835mm, width at the shell - 17.5mm. So it seems that the sword on the following photos (fig. 2, 3, 5) has almost the same dimensions as the sword in Mr. Németh's collection.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4: The sabre from Németh's collection

Fig. 5

 Soon there will be a short update of this post. „”

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1. Source.
2. „Régi gyakorló - vívó kard. Hüvely nélkül. Pengében jelzést nem találtam. Teljes hossza: 99 cm, penge hossza: 84 cm, penge szélessége a penge tövénél mérve kb. 1,8 cm. A képeken látható állapotban.” (Vatera)