Historical Pedagogy

Messer: The Overlooked German Weapon

By HILT Official · Aug 23, 2026 · 8 min read

The messer has the largest surviving treatise in HEMA behind it and almost nobody trains it. What the weapon is, what Lecküchner teaches, and how to add it to your club week.

A Sword That Calls Itself a Knife The messer is the most common sidearm of fifteenth century Germany and one of the least trained weapons in modern HEMA. One edge, one hand, a chunky knife-style grip, and a spike of steel sticking sideways out of the cross. It looks like a farm tool with ambitions. Behind it sits the single largest surviving treatise devoted to any weapon in the entire HEMA corpus, and most clubs give the messer one novelty evening a year before going straight back to longsword. That's a waste. This article is my attempt to fix it. I'll say up front where I stand. If your…

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