Origin of the term Eisenhauer

[katana]

Originally Posted by mrwizard

just a small remark from my side to stating the obvious:
'babelfish' is hardly a reference for the german language of the 19th century.

I agree, but with limited knowledge of the German language it is extremely useful to me.

Originally Posted by mrwizard

Luckily, two brothers that are more famous for their collection of folk-tales, compiled a dictionary exactly at that time.
There is no "Eisenhauer" in the dictionary but the meaning of the word "Hauer" is explained in detail:
http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/wbgui_py?lemma=hauer

There "Hauer" is directly connected with
- miners
- woodcutters
- several tools where just "hammer" would not be appropiate
- any slashing weapon
- the male wild boar
- the fangs of a male wild boar
- someone who strikes
- the act of striking itself

There are words in English, spelt the same but with differing meanings....and, as you have shown, the same occurs in German. Obviously the context of the word etc within a sentence allows the reader to understand the meaning of the word without using a dictionary to check the various possible meanings and then deciding which 'discription' fits the sentence. I used a translation programme which would probably work in a similar manner....I had 'eisen' with 'haue(r)' so, perhaps that is why I did not get, for instance 'iron male boar'. I'll assume that 'iron' matched 'strike' as a better translation.
I am not arguing the merits of Bablefish, but two of your 19th C dictionary meanings involve the word 'strike'.

Originally Posted by mrwizard

And in combination with a list of prefix words for several other trades (eg. Steinhauer for stone mason)
Strangely there is no mention of smithing there.

You have already mentioned that 'eisenhauer' was not in the 19th C German dictionary you quoted.....a word that was, it seems, known and used on a number of 19thC German produced blades ?? Perhaps, it was not a 'concise' version.
However, I made a possible assumption that 'eisenhauer' was a reference to blade/black smith (in fact one of your definitions was 'any slashing weapon') so, possibly,even slashing weapon maker.
If 'hauer' is a craftsman or trade and then prefixed with 'iron' this is not an unreasonable assumption.(so perhaps Babelfish is not as bad as you stated)

Originally Posted by mrwizard

Does all this help us in explaining why there is the word "Eisenhauer" on some of the blades? No, it doesn't! .

To make such a bold statement you must, in fact, know why 'eisenhauer' is on some blades. I was just suggesting that the mark may not be a sign of the quality of the steel but, an indication of the skill of it's manufacture. It may help....it may not....it is just an suggestion.

Originally Posted by mrwizard

I don't think that there is a linguistic answer to that question. IMHO as long as we don't discover any
contempory text explaining the reason behind putting "Eisenhauer" on the blades we may as well
continue discussing the incription of "+VLFBERH+T" on some 9th century blades... .

You could well be right, but waiting and hoping the answers will suddenly 'materialise' is not 'my way' . Trying to find answers to questions often further knowledge and understanding. Wrong ideas or theories may lead to 'nowhere' ....but you wouldn't find out if they are incorrect....until proven otherwise. Even respected researchers have modified or even changed their views due to new evidence etc.

Just an afterthought, your 'hauser' definitions included woodcutter ....eisen hauer....iron woodcutter ? .....we call him the 'Tin man'

Come Toto, the games afoot

Regards David

.

[mrwizard]

Originally Posted by katana

I agree, but with limited knowledge of the German language it is extremely useful to me.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings: my posting was in
no way meant to attack personally. I just wanted to point
out that the language spoken today is quite different from the language spoken 150 years ago.
Even today it is very difficult for a non native speaker (sometimes even for native speakers) to follow a conversation in certain parts of germany.

Starting 1838 the brothers Grimm compiled a dictionary with the goal to contain all german words since the 16th century, their meaning, and their origin.
It was not finished until 123 years later (of course not by the brother). It has 32 Volumes and explains about 320.000 index-words. So if you want to figure out something about a german word you look it up first in Grimms dictionary.

As i know you and most others in the forum don't speak
german i took the freedom to look it up for you and translate the main findings. Sadly - reading my own post - i understand that this could have been misunderstood as arrogance. I apologize for that (and for this post for that matter).

Originally Posted by katana

[...]
To make such a bold statement you must, in fact, know why 'eisenhauer' is on some blades. I was just suggesting that the mark may not be a sign of the quality of the steel but, an indication of the skill of it's manufacture. It may help....it may not....it is just an suggestion.

What i wanted to state is the following:
Even if we found linguistic evidence of the origin of the term "Eisenhauer". There is still no evidence why it ended up being etched onto a blade.

We have the thesis that it just a special word that stands a high quality of craftmanship, like a family name.
This would make sense if the inscription was made only for advertisement and "Made by dwarfs in their magic kingdom by repeatedly striking at iron" would be too long to fit on the blade

We have another thesis mentioned right in the first post that it is a quality seal that ensures a special ability.
In this case the ability to cut-iron. Makes sense too,
as it is useful for advertising and very precise in what
kind of special ability the blade has. I think this is the
most likely.

We have the third thesis that i posted in my last post.
That it originally meant the ability to cut iron but later
evolved into another word for convex grind. Less useful
for advertising but even more precise in a certain
property of the blade.

But after all it is all speculation.

[katana]

Hi Thilo,
I appreciate you taking the time to expand and explain your previous postings, thank you. I also did not realise the importance (or was aware ) of the Dictionary compiled by the brothers Grimm .....I do now .

I also appreciate that this forum is multi-national and multi-cultural and sometimes misunderstandings do occur.

I have obviously 'mis-read' the 'tone' of your posting and wish to apologise also.

All the best

Kind Regards David

[Jim McDougall]

I'd like to join in here with the interchange on misreading, and admit that I also misinterpreted some the the text here Thilo. I have studied arms for more years than I can accurately specify, and believe I felt that it was being suggested our efforts in discovering more on this term were in vain. With that I wanted to show the evidence we did have, and posit that although not conclusive it was the best we had to date.

When you mentioned the reference you noted from Gerhard Seifert, initially I misperceived what was said, and in reaction thought the comment 'obviously he had no evidence' disparaging to this distinguished arms scholar. He was of course, and as you must well know, one of the foremost arms scholars who edited the esteemed journal of arms and armour for many years. After later rereading the post I realized what you had actually said was that when he noted that the term 'could have' come from that source, he had specified, as I knew him to do, that he could not be sure. I was glad I had not responded to that initially, especially after reading your well worded responses to David.

I would also note I had no idea of the time span with the Grimm Brothers work, which would negate my presumption in regard to discovery of the term.
Thank you for the informative detail on that. I had been unaware of many of the usages of these terms and the discourse you and David have had has been really outstanding in better understanding of these words.

Returning to the discussion at hand, it seems that if the actual term or its variations remain unclear in the formidable corpus of material on arms and armour that was certainly well known to Mr. Seifert, the German arms journals he knew thoroughly, and other arms scholars who have surmised the meaning and purpose of use for the term on blades, then all we can do is indeed speculate.

It does seem established that the cutting of nails to test blades, as noted by Mr. Seifert, as well as other references I have heard noting that the same type testing was accomplished using iron wire, suggest that the 'iron cutting' ability must have been a well known standard for quality. That would stand regardless of the specific term used.

Even in modern marketing, emphatic terms are used to dramatize the quality of a product, for example 'everready' batteries, which suggest that they are always dependable and many other analogies. I would speculate, in accord with the arms authors previously noted, that in the burgeoning commercialism and industrialization of the 19th century, the term 'eisenhauer' may have been intended to recall these classical references to the testing of blades that seem to date back to Passau's early days as an arms center. We already know that the almost legendary 'running wolf' marking which is generally held to have its origins there was a symbol used to suggest quality in much the same manner.

Thank you very much for the very courteous manner in these interactions and especially for the excellent contributions and information. Its good to have you here on the forum!

All the best,
Jim

[qusko]

I am sharing some samples of eisenhauer blades dating 1849 from polish lost items in II world war :
http://dzielautracone.gov.pl/katalog...kt/?obid=50479
http://dzielautracone.gov.pl/katalog...kt/?obid=50881

Additionally pictures of eisenhauer blade mark on one side and M&C on the other side. Can someone tell me who could be a manufacturer? Usually those blades are German, but sometimes also Dutch. I guess some Solingen manufacturer but don't know which one.

[Gonzoadler]

Hello,

I want to try to answer the initial question of this thread:
Here in Germany the general explanation for blades marked "Eisenhauer" is, that their quality was tested by cut an iron nail pinned in wood in two pieces without any visual damage on the blade after this test. Some sources say that this is also the origin of the german word "Nagelprobe", but this is uncertain and there are alternative explanations.

Regards
Robin

[Jim McDougall]

Robin, thank you for bringing up this old thread. Its funny looking through the entries and one mentions the futility of discussing the ULFBERHT inscriptions on 9th century blades. We've come a long way in the past 11 years
Ironically, we are presently discussing just that on a concurrent thread.

With 'EISENHAUER', just as with the ANDREA FERARA conundrum (whether an actual maker or term 'good steel') and others, it is often hard to get to the bottom of the kinds of thinking that went into these blades.

There were British military swords in the 19th century marked LEAD CUTTER.
I had a Chinese sword with very old blade which was marked in old Manchu script rarely seen, when I finally got the translation, it was simply characters indicating essentially 'good steel', or to that effect.

So while sword blades are often emblazoned with mottos, invocations and magic or talismanic motif, the more mundane character of quality and reduction to simple commercial motivation is often the case.

As Sir Thomas Mallory said in "Le Morte d'Arthur" (1485), "....the name of the sword sayd the lady is EXCALIBUR, that is as muche to say, it cuts stele".
The complex etymological analysis of the word goes to old Welsh, Cornish and Breton terms bringing the Welsh compound 'caled' (=hard) and 'bwich (=breach, cleft), and there are other complex versions to the Welsh author Geoffrey of Monmouth (c,1136) 'caliburnus' deriving from latinized chalybs from the Greek word for steel.
In this maelstrom of linguistic and etymological confusion it seems that literary genesis was keenly at hand in using descriptive and meaningful words for swords very much in the age old convention of naming weapons from the age of the Vikings.