Reader Squire Rusticus followed me down the pointy-hat sidetrail to Bavaria and Austria. This, in turn, led me to explore Germanic hunting tradition. The Germanic nations have very distinct and ritualized hunting traditions. I recall reading an essay by Jeff Cooper many years ago about a hunt in Germany that he likened to a poem. From Sports Afield:
One of the many charms of hunting in European countries is the importance of tradition. Age-old rituals meant to honor the game animal and the hunter are still practiced in many regions.
One of these traditions is the letzebissen, or last bite, which is practiced in Germany, Austria, Holland, and some Eastern European countries. The animal is placed upon a bed of leaves as a sign of respect, and a sprig of vegetation is placed in its mouth. Another sprig of greenery is placed in the successful hunter’s hatband to let others know of his or her good fortune. And if you hunt in Germany or Austria, you willhear the term “Weidmannsheil,” which functions as a good-luck sendoff as well as a form of congratulations when you return with that telltale sprig of vegetation in your hatband.
Hunting optics manufacturer Pulsar Journal notes:
Our brand ambassadors from Germany – Henrik Sproedt and Freddy Lietz – also raised this point. “Hunting in Germany is characterized by respect for tradition and a high level of expertise. For me, modern hunting combined with the preservation of tradition is what makes hunting what it is,“ – said Freddy when we first asked him about his country’s unique customs.
Henrik elaborated a little more on education: “Starting from the beginning, I would say a rather unique German hunting tradition is that you need to master a profound and intensive education including at least 130 hours of theory about nature conservation, sustainability, farming, forestry, law, animals and weaponry, plus approximately 30-50 hours of practical shooting. After that, you have to pass a written, oral and practical exam.”
There is something to be said for mandating extensive study and “profound education.” Hunting and the shooting sports are a serious endeavor and should be treated as such.
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I am an introvert by temperament, in the sense that prolonged, intense interaction with a lot of people drains my battery. The past week was nothing but that, so I needed to lie up for a bit Monday night. Nothing better for a recharge than firing up a good history documentary or two, and The Great War series on Youtube fills the bill. So I dug into the Wild East tale of the Baltics in 1919.
This region became a hotly contested borderland as the pre-war empires splintered. The Bolsheviks were pushing West out of Russia, driven by revolutionary fervor and by plain, old Russian expansionism — and the Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians were asserting their independence. German anti-Communist paramilitaries called Freikorps jumped into the fray, at first assisting Baltic resistance to the Bolshevik advance, and then fighting the Latvians and Estonians who sought to expel them.
The German freebooters ended up fighting on their own hook, cut loose from any sanction from the Weimar Republic government in Berlin.
The Freikorps were not merely interested in fighting the Reds — the Baltics had long been a frontier zone to the Germans, and the Freikorps fighters were after what frontiersmen have always been after: land. A German newspaper ran a recruitment ad for Freikorps fighters.
Wonderful Settlement Opportunity! Anyone who wants to own his own estate in the beautiful Baltic, report to one of the following recruitment offices….
A German Freikorps commander explicitly copped to the intent to form a German military settler colony in Latvia. Such a colony would be complementary to the long-established (and much resented) Baltic German nobility that had dominated the region since the Teutonic Knights rode east in the 12th Century.
Freikorpskämpfer Ernst von Saloman recounted that:
“Among those troops that I had joined were plenty of regular units with reliable officers, crowds of restless adventurers on the lookout for a fight and with it the chances of loot and relaxation of ordinary rules of conduct. Patriots could not bear the idea of break down of law and order at home and wish to guard the frontiers from the incursion of the Red Flood. There was the Baltic Landswehr, recruited from the local gentry who were determined at all cost to save their 700 year old traditions, their noble and vigorous yet fastidious culture, the Eastern bulwark of German civilization. And there were German battalions consisting of men who wanted to settle in the country who were hungering for land.”
The Latvian and Estonian republican nationalists weren’t having it. They didn’t want to be overrun by the Reds, but they didn’t want to be dominated by the Germans, either. Utterly savage fighting ensued. It was war to the knife and knife to the hilt, cruel kill-your-prisoners irregular warfare that brought profound destruction and misery to everyone it touched, and foreshadowed the mind-boggling brutality that characterized the Eastern Front of the Second World War.
Von Salomon offers a vivid depiction of the barbarism of this nasty Frontier Partisan war:
“We fired into surprised crowds and we raged. We chased the Latvians like rabbits over the fields, we burnt every house and destroyed every bridge and every telegraph mast. We flung the bodies into fountains and threw hand grenades on top. We slaughtered whoever fell into our hands, we burned whatever would catch fire… There were no human feelings left in our hearts… A giant smoke trail marked our path. We had set fire to the stake where we burnt… the laws and values of the civilized world…”
A Baltic Blood Meridian.
lane batot says
And German hunting over the centuries created a lot of really good hunting breeds of dogs! Many are very popular today in the U. S. A. ,like the Weimaraner I had for almost 14 years–poorly classified as a “Sporting” bird dog breed in the U. S., they are really far more versatile, like a German “Cur” type, in my opinion! They are called “Forester’s Dogs” in Germany, and were used to patrol properties to discourage poachers and trespassers, and bred with strong protective instincts, as well as hunting drive. But you know, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander–my beloved Weim was THE BEST “trespassing dog” I ever had!(so far……) And of course the German immigrants had a huge influence in Frontier America. In North Carolina(where I live) there were numerous German settlements very early on(1700’s), and in fact, still in Winston-Salem(mid-state) we have a surviving replica of an old German Moravian settlement like a living museum–“Old Salem”–a really neat place to visit, if one is interested in history of the early European Colonists!
JimC says
There were a number of great German Long Hunters. Kaspar Mansker and Michael Stoner we’re both contemporaries — and equals — of Boone.
Craig Rullman says
At Hohenfels, where Red Stag were bounding between armored columns, a German fellow told me about the requirements to earn a hunting license, as illustrated in your piece. To become a Jaegermeister is no easy feat. But the Red Stag I saw would make every minute of study worth the pursuit. And anyway, krauts.
J.F. Bell says
Echoes of a leader on losing control?
Dynamite piece from Cooper; the man may have been a curmudgeon of the first order, but right remains right no matter how one opts to dress it out. I occasionally look at what passes for hunting culture in our present day and despair. Like all else in This Marvelous New world it is often commercialized beyond salvage, but it’s worth believing, I think, to keep faith that somewhere out in the deep woods is still a solitary man with a wood-stocked rifle and a sense of the world not filtered through glass or thermal or night vision.
Anyhow.
I imagine it surprises none to see that we have arrived at a point with a growing abundance of law and a waning of tradition. The former is a poor substitute, naturally – law being the exercise of outside forces on the individual whereas tradition is something more native, some acquired quality threaded in with bone and sinew and an unchanged and unchanging aspect of the man himself, incapable of physical separation from its host.
This naturalistic temper of tradition is at once its greatest strength and deepest vulnerability. There is no ground so rich as pride for keeping folkways, but folkways seldom codify well, and the society that tries often as not carries forward with the sad legalistic impression of its founding character while the origins lie mouldering in a ditch, generations gone.
This is preferable to some. Traditions nurtured in private are often more flexible than law, and less subject to taxation – but, as our learned and credentialed betters would have us know, the change is healthful and for our own ignorant good.
JimC says
This really got the juices flowing. Firstly, I realize that I love the word “folkways” in the same way love the word “lore,” and for the same reasons. I like the way it looks on the page (screen), I like the way it sounds, and the implications of its meaning(s) resonate like a long note on a cello. Strange and pleasing sensation.
Tradition versus law… there’s so much to dig into here. I am a believer in the rule of law — but we have moved far beyond the law as the armature of civilized life into a stifling regulatory ecosystem where hall monitors police speech and thought and have been empowered to literally force people to stay in their houses, etc. Did that happen because we have abandoned tradition, or is the erosion of tradition the byproduct of the advance of the regulatory state? Both at the same time? Dammit, I’m going to be chewing on THAT for a while…
J.F. Bell says
We’re I to guess, I’d say what we’re looking at is a twisting of tribal cohesion.
The same preservative impulse that gets everybody working together to put out a fire and save their village is commendable; somewhat less so when the flames are out and the ersatz fire captains decide that owning matches and gasoline constitutes a hanging offense.
There are two kinds of people in such a circumstance. One man participates in putting out the fire and goes home feeling the situation addressed and resolved – and the other works tirelessly to remind villagers that they all may roast in their homes one night if they don’t form an all-powerful full-time Office of Fire Prevention.
In time the villagers learn to deal with the hassle of safety inspectors rifling through their homes unannounced and levying fines. There are still fires, of course, some them quite large, but the safety of the community is too precious to be left in the hands of mere peasants.
A generation on, the OFP budget swells while civic engagement declines because, having once done his part, the first man believes it handled once and given over to professionals now. They do it better than volunteers, anyway, and there’s always somebody on watch. There is a nominal safety and convenience on outsourcing.
Of course, when the OFP reaches the half-century mark it’s essentially a jobs program for the local gentry (who might let your house burn if you stray too much out of line…because accidents happen, y’know).
The big takeaway, naturally, is how at least the good people don’t have to fight their own fires like they did in Grandpa’s day.
Thomas A McIntyre says
“… a solitary man with a wood-stocked rifle and a sense of the world not filtered through glass or thermal or night vision…” I think care should be taken not to turn hunting weapons–firearms or archery tackle–into a cultural fetish. The genuine spirit of the hunter, not what he carries, is what matters more. I use a scope because I can’t see damn iron sights! Synthetic stocks relieve the stress of carrying best-quality walnut into adverse weather conditions, turning a “safe” gun into one for hard use in the field. Thermal and night vision, though, are another matter–a technology too far. Interestingly, traditional chamois hunters in the Alps used hearing enhancers to aid them in the hunt: golden earrings, believing they helped pick up the sound of hooves on rocks.
Quixotic Mainer says
The Youtube channel “Cap and Ball” is right at the intersection of historic firearms, history, and extremely ethical hunting. I had learned the “last bite” tradition from that gent. He’s a scholar and a truly excellent target shot, who is still humble enough to admit his chokes and misses, (which any hunter is loathe to do).
Somehow the partisan fighting in Latvia had never come up on my HUD. Sounds vicious as all those things tend toward, but at least they classed things up by bringing lancers!
Lynda A. Sanchez says
Agreed about folkway, tradition, folklore etc. They bring out the quality side of man, the love of home, hearth, family as well as respect for the dogs we love, the family we cherish and the tradition of the hunting folk. As you all have noted, we have lost so much. It is good to be reminded of that past as Jim has here.
Additionally, seeing images of German hunters in their special Bavarian type hats and Lederhosen (special leather hunting shorts worn by people in Bavaria especially) made me think of the one photo I have of my German Grandfather as he went hunting in the alps. He was dressed exactly like those images and it raised a lump in my throat. Proud and respectful hunter that family lost their forest and hunting country in W W I and by WW II had nothing. Amazing what war does to a nation also as exemplified in the graphic descriptions in the Baltics.
Thanks, Lynda
JimC says
That’s poignant Lynda. Thank you.
Lynda A. Sanchez says
Yes, guess you caught me off guard there since I have lived in Apache country and the borderlands for so long now. Nevertheless hunting tradition is good when taught and lived with the proper respect for all participants, animal or human.
Lynda
Jean says
This was terrific. Thanks so much for the info.
JimC says
Thanks Jean.
Joe says
Love the look of those German Jaeger rifles. I’ve also seen some fantastic hunting swords from Germany that really affirm what much of this great write-up presents on the ritualistic nature of the German hunting tradition.