Paul Hector Mair

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coat of arms of Paul Hector Mair

Paul Hector Mair , also Paulus , (* 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 steward.

Life

From the Mair Collection: Court Fight (around 1544)

He collected old weapons and fencing books (for example he bought Jörg Wilhalm's handwriting in 1544, the Codex Wallerstein in 1556 ) and finally came up with the idea of recording the “delicacy of the doctrine” in a new compendium that surpassed all previous ones. To do this, he hired two experienced fencers who had to check and refine all known techniques until they could be painted in a perfect form. This venture turned out to be enormously costly and he spent most of his family's wealth and income on it. He hired Jörg Breu the Younger as a painter , whose presence in Augsburg has been assured from 1543. Mair was a well-known figure in Augsburg and gave lavish parties and receptions, partly financed by embezzlement from the city treasury. These were discovered after a dispute with an official after whom the books were checked, and in 1579, at the age of 62, he was hanged as a thief.

Three versions of his compendium have survived, all in two volumes; a Latin version, a German version and a synoptic Latin-German version. All three were created after 1542, probably from 1543 or 1544, for which years Jörg Breu's presence in Augsburg is assured.

A shorter, later manuscript is also preserved, made from Anton Rast's notes , which Mair acquired in 1552. Rast († 1549) was a sword sweeper in Nuremberg and probably identical to a captain of the Marx brothers mentioned in 1522 .

The private Amberger Collection in Baltimore, Maryland, also contains a 17-page fragment of an illustrated fencing manuscript that can be attributed to Mair's environment. While the illustrations are for the most part similar to the woodcuts published by Egenolph, the original incorrect assignment of Ms. to Dürer, the weapons shown, and an illustration not shown in Egenolph indicate that it is a copy of an earlier, possibly a copy. Dürer's accessible manuscript.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paulus Hector Mair  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Mair, Paul Hector
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mair, Paulus Hector; Mair, Paul Hector
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Clerk, city treasurer and steward of the city of Augsburg
DATE OF BIRTH 1517
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1579
Place of death augsburg