A knight’s armor can withstand a lot. Sword Swipe? A blow with the hammer? No problem. But dappers with greasy fingers, they ruin even the finest armor. Someone, Joachim Rogos and Georg Spitzlberger are now looking very closely, touched the breastplate. The imprint can be seen on the shimmering steel – and must be quickly polished away so that no rust sticks to the new showpiece.
Spitzlberger and Rogos watch over the armory in the Landshut armory, and with it for a few weeks also over a very special new addition: a harness that can be converted from a foot to a horse fight. That sounds rather unspectacular and very special to the common foot folk and all non-knights. But armor as complicated as this has not been made for 500 years. Now she is waiting in the armory to be used. Carefully oiled with Ballistol, in the company of dozens of helmets, breastplates and other war tools that have been collected by the Landshut sponsors for the largest medieval festival in Europe over the past five decades.
The new harness in the Landshut armory – here in the configuration for foot combat.
(Photo: Sebastian Beck)
The plumber Peter Müller put about 1000 hours of work into the high-tech device. This allows conclusions to be drawn about their price, but Rogos and Spitzlberger are silent about the exact amount. After all, the armament was donated by Sissi and Ernst Pöschl, the long-time chairman of the sponsors, so people don’t like to talk about sums of money. Only this much is revealed: The price corresponds to that of a mid-range car. Including all extras, one should perhaps add.
Why do you spend tens of thousands of euros on a single harness that is only used every few years? The Pöschl family, says Joachim Rogos, is emotionally very attached to the Landshut wedding. And the demands on the authenticity of the performances are increasing, all the more since the Landshut wedding has been part of Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage since 2018. “We see ourselves as a mobile monument preservation company,” says Rogos, who has trained fencing himself for years.
Under the eyes of the noble ladies
The “real” Landshut wedding took place in November 1475 when Duke George the Rich married the Polish king’s daughter Hedwig. The celebration went down in history, also because the huge feast with 10,000 guests was well documented. In the Middle Ages, such a festival included tournament events at which the knights put on their show – under the eyes of the noble ladies, as a contemporary witness from Landshut says: “The queen leaned in a window with her maidens to watch.” On the tournament ground, the so-called racetrack, the knights on horseback competed against each other with lances, a downright ridiculous sport when you consider that it would be 400 years before the invention of the X-ray machine and general anesthesia.
The chronicler describes in detail how the opponents eyed each other suspiciously before the “race”. A Pole took it very carefully with Duke Christoph: “He examined his arms, buttocks, pants and where it seemed to him that the Duke might have an advantage.” After some quarreling, which at times spoiled the mood, Christoph and the Pole went up against each other: “Both had hit so well that the Pole broke the spear. The Duke also knocked down the Pole’s horse.”
A legendary tournament as a template
Plattner Peter Müller studied such reports carefully because they serve as an important template for his replicas. The tournament book of René d’Anjou, for example, who invited the French high nobility to his castle on the Loire in the summer of 1446: 90 knights and their entourage took part in the festival. To this day, an almost fantastically illustrated handwriting, which could also be called a “graphic novel”, bears witness to the spectacle and especially to the armor used. The text is written in 3952 verses.
High-tech from the Middle Ages: The detail of an elbow joint that is completely protected.
(Photo: Sebastian Beck)
For four years, Müller worked on the set for Landshut in his workshop in Orschweier, Baden-Württemberg. The special thing about it is not only that it can be converted for fighting on horseback in a few minutes. It is also completely closed, which means that the knight does not show any nakedness where he could be injured by his opponent. The elbows and shoulders have complicated joints – Müller also found the models for this on medieval grave slabs.
The cliché of the immobile knight, as Müller has long known, is not true: The hardened steel armor weighs just 25 kilograms, and it can even be used to do a somersault. It was primarily used as a piece of sports equipment for the high nobility – far too good to be dented in a battle.
Joachim Rogos trained fencers and, together with Georg Spitzlberger, watches over the armory.
(Photo: Sebastian Beck)
It will be two years before it will be presented at the pageant at the next Landshut wedding. The knight group then decides who is allowed to put on the armor. The noble one shouldn’t be too fat, too thin, too small or too big, says Rogos. That should limit the circle of candidates a little.
For the armorer Müller, the Landshuter Harnisch was initially the last major order. The global demand for knight armor is not exactly huge, and armor pieces are no longer in great demand as collectibles for stately living rooms. Plattner Müller, who studied mechanical engineering, is therefore working again at the Fraunhofer Society in materials research. In his workshop, he says, he is currently making steel stairs for a friend.