A Myth Busted: the Famous OTTHEINRICH Wheellock Arquebus Dated 1533!

Matchlock · 15th November 2013, 08:23 PM

Up to this day, the museum has completely rejected each and every attempt to ask them to take out the lock and photograph its inner mechanism in detail. As the gun is in stable though horribly acid-cleaned condition there are no practical reasons for such a rejection because neither the stock nor the iron parts will obviously fall into pieces when two screws get detached ...

My explanation, and that of other people as well, is that the curators are afraid of a myth being busted as the lock is far from being identical today to what it looked like when it was made almost 500 years agao. The fact that this gun in a way is a Bavarian local hero piece adds only very little to my understanding for the museum people: science and objectivity is what counts after all. These museum guys have done enough violent barbarity to this gun by acid-cleaning it around 1970.

I will, however, prove in detail by the outer appearance of the lock and surrounding wood, plus the posted images which I took myself, that that myth is overdue to be busted, and I will do so now. Who needs museum people for scíentific purposes anyway? Here we go.

First of all, this gun is the forth oldest dated wheellock in existence: 1533. In the Army Museum Brussels is a another arquebus, dated 1532, with combined wheellock and snap-tinderlock mechanism, and with the very same type of lock but unaltered and completely original in all its parts.
The comparison of these two locks and other related specimen will prove the crude and quite modern alterations that the HOTTH arquebus underwent.

For the sake of completeness of argumentation, the other three known dated predecessors are:

- the combined crossbow-wheellock, datable because of its inscrition to between 1521 and 1526, in the Bavarian National Museum Munich, inv.no. ...

- two arquebuses dated 1530 and 1531 respectively, bought by King Charles V from the Marquardt workshop in Augsburg, and both kept in the Real Armeria Madrid, inv.no.s K. 32 (the older) and K. 30.

I will post more on these four guns (including the 1532 Brussels piece) in due course.

Best,
Michael

cornelistromp · 17th November 2013, 01:13 PM

Hi Michael,

very good to see you again here on the forum

the pommel of the landknechtsword is of Norman Type 13, a pommel engraved with rays diverging from the base to give the appearance of a stylished cockleshell. this type appeared from 1470-1640. something like the dagger posted here http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16452

if I'm not sure if the pan cover button portrays a shell and whether there is some kind of a relation with the pommel.

Do you think that the whole wheelock dates back around 1570 and therefor is a subsequent replacement ?

best,

Matchlock · 17th November 2013, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cornelistromp

Hi Michael,

very good to see you again here on the forum

the pommel of the landknechtsword is of Norman Type 13, a pommel engraved with rays diverging from the base to give the appearance of a stylished cockleshell. this type appeared from 1470-1640. something like the dagger posted here http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16452

if I'm not sure if the pan cover button portrays a shell and whether there is some kind of a relation with the pommel.

Do you think that the whole wheelock dates back around 1570 and therefor is a subsequent replacement ?

best,

Hi,

Please do wait for the threat to develop and for me to post more!

Best,
m

Matchlock · 29th December 2013, 02:34 PM

Hi there,

I realize you had to be patiently waiting for me a long time to carry on and post the real thing, i.e., bust the myth that this gun can be regarded seriously with the eyes of weaponry.

I must admit that I was planning to wait for a better day to come for my bad spine and legs that would enable me to attend the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt 30 km away once more and take better and up-to-date photos of that Ottheinrich arquebus. That day sadly did not come and the weather at this time of the year is just too dreary to take promising images in a museum with rooms as horribly darkened as in Ingolstadt.

Thus I have to resort to my older images, hoping that they will reveal what I am trying to show.

In post #2 above I stated that the present wheellock mechanism may not be the original and has at least been crudely altered in order to evoke a more archaic impression, for what reason ever.

This came from an old noble collection and was sold at auction at the Dorotheum, Vienna, from February 29 to March 2nd, 1912, where the newly founded Bavarian National Museum Munich bought it, and since 1972 it has been on display in the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt.
We can see from the photos of 1912 that the lock looked just the way it looks today, with the pyrite dog an inadequate association of a ca. 1600 musket to a lock of 1533 (see b/w attachments). Minor staghorn filets were missing from the upper brim of the forestock but they were replaced in the correct manner.

Lock mechanisms of identical shape and date prove what the original dog and dog spring looked like. There is a finely preserved detached lock of ca. 1530-35 in the Dresden armory, and another with the same makers mark mounted on a complete long arquebus in the Royal Armouries Leeds. So we can also tell that the original sickle-shaped dog spring encircling the wheel has been removed and replaced - not modernzied! - but in the incorrect style, with unequally long arms of the mid-16th c.! Had the spring corresponded in style to the dog, we would have accepted the alteration as a homogeneous late-16th c. modernization for another shooter. The fact of deliberately choosing an obsolete form, however, and, what is even more, an inapt one, plus adding a substantial portion to the fore end of the lock plate just to accomodate that ultra long dog spring, makes me think of some forger - who, luckily was incompetent ...

On the outer side of the lock plate we can still make out the refilled spaces where different parts of the former action (now missing) were riveted. I am sure that I would find further evidence of forgery if I was allowed to take out the lock ... Well, it is not really that important. You and I can tell by the diffefrent contours of the lock and stock that the present lock mechanism is probably not the original.

For the moment being, the fact is sad enough that an arquebus dated 1533 that once belonged to one of the most influential noble men of the 16th century, and a close friend of Henry VIII, is no better preserved than Henry VIII's two surviving personal guns, the wheellock mechanisms of which are missing. If it were mine, I would present it without the present lock. It looks almost as ridiculous as one of Henry's guns with the barbaricially 'reconstructed' 'matchlock' (with a serpentine and lockplate in shapes that never ever existed, let alone in 1537!, at present on display at the Mary Rose Museum Portsmouth).

Résumé: The lock mechanism does, in all probability, not originally belong and should consequently be removed. Presented together as a unity, this 'unholy' union evokes the impression of a unanimous gun - which definitley is put at dispute.

Please see also my thread on Henry VIII's two breechloading arquebuses, one dated 1537, the other ca. 1540:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...634#post164634

Best,
Michael

fernando · 29th December 2013, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matchlock

... I must admit that I was planning to wait for a better day to come for my bad spine and legs that would enable me to attend the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt 30 km away once more and take better and up-to-date photos of that Ottheinrich arquebus...

Save your energy for a later date; you will soon have a visit to guide around

Matchlock · 29th December 2013, 06:42 PM

I know, 'Nando,

Still I got to get this here done, and I did.

Best,
Michl

15th November 2013, 08:23 PM	#1
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Up to this day, the museum has completely rejected each and every attempt to ask them to take out the lock and photograph its inner mechanism in detail. As the gun is in stable though horribly acid-cleaned condition there are no practical reasons for such a rejection because neither the stock nor the iron parts will obviously fall into pieces when two screws get detached ... My explanation, and that of other people as well, is that the curators are afraid of a myth being busted as the lock is far from being identical today to what it looked like when it was made almost 500 years agao. The fact that this gun in a way is a Bavarian local hero piece adds only very little to my understanding for the museum people: science and objectivity is what counts after all. These museum guys have done enough violent barbarity to this gun by acid-cleaning it around 1970. I will, however, prove in detail by the outer appearance of the lock and surrounding wood, plus the posted images which I took myself, that that myth is overdue to be busted, and I will do so now. Who needs museum people for scíentific purposes anyway? Here we go. First of all, this gun is the forth oldest dated wheellock in existence: 1533. In the Army Museum Brussels is a another arquebus, dated 1532, with combined wheellock and snap-tinderlock mechanism, and with the very same type of lock but unaltered and completely original in all its parts. The comparison of these two locks and other related specimen will prove the crude and quite modern alterations that the HOTTH arquebus underwent. For the sake of completeness of argumentation, the other three known dated predecessors are: - the combined crossbow-wheellock, datable because of its inscrition to between 1521 and 1526, in the Bavarian National Museum Munich, inv.no. ... - two arquebuses dated 1530 and 1531 respectively, bought by King Charles V from the Marquardt workshop in Augsburg, and both kept in the Real Armeria Madrid, inv.no.s K. 32 (the older) and K. 30. I will post more on these four guns (including the 1532 Brussels piece) in due course. Best, Michael Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 16th November 2013 at 07:06 PM.

29th December 2013, 02:34 PM	#4
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	Hi there, I realize you had to be patiently waiting for me a long time to carry on and post the real thing, i.e., bust the myth that this gun can be regarded seriously with the eyes of weaponry. I must admit that I was planning to wait for a better day to come for my bad spine and legs that would enable me to attend the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt 30 km away once more and take better and up-to-date photos of that Ottheinrich arquebus. That day sadly did not come and the weather at this time of the year is just too dreary to take promising images in a museum with rooms as horribly darkened as in Ingolstadt. Thus I have to resort to my older images, hoping that they will reveal what I am trying to show. In post #2 above I stated that the present wheellock mechanism may not be the original and has at least been crudely altered in order to evoke a more archaic impression, for what reason ever. This came from an old noble collection and was sold at auction at the Dorotheum, Vienna, from February 29 to March 2nd, 1912, where the newly founded Bavarian National Museum Munich bought it, and since 1972 it has been on display in the Bavarian Army Museum Ingolstadt. We can see from the photos of 1912 that the lock looked just the way it looks today, with the pyrite dog an inadequate association of a ca. 1600 musket to a lock of 1533 (see b/w attachments). Minor staghorn filets were missing from the upper brim of the forestock but they were replaced in the correct manner. Lock mechanisms of identical shape and date prove what the original dog and dog spring looked like. There is a finely preserved detached lock of ca. 1530-35 in the Dresden armory, and another with the same makers mark mounted on a complete long arquebus in the Royal Armouries Leeds. So we can also tell that the original sickle-shaped dog spring encircling the wheel has been removed and replaced - not modernzied! - but in the incorrect style, with unequally long arms of the mid-16th c.! Had the spring corresponded in style to the dog, we would have accepted the alteration as a homogeneous late-16th c. modernization for another shooter. The fact of deliberately choosing an obsolete form, however, and, what is even more, an inapt one, plus adding a substantial portion to the fore end of the lock plate just to accomodate that ultra long dog spring, makes me think of some forger - who, luckily was incompetent ... On the outer side of the lock plate we can still make out the refilled spaces where different parts of the former action (now missing) were riveted. I am sure that I would find further evidence of forgery if I was allowed to take out the lock ... Well, it is not really that important. You and I can tell by the diffefrent contours of the lock and stock that the present lock mechanism is probably not the original. For the moment being, the fact is sad enough that an arquebus dated 1533 that once belonged to one of the most influential noble men of the 16th century, and a close friend of Henry VIII, is no better preserved than Henry VIII's two surviving personal guns, the wheellock mechanisms of which are missing. If it were mine, I would present it without the present lock. It looks almost as ridiculous as one of Henry's guns with the barbaricially 'reconstructed' 'matchlock' (with a serpentine and lockplate in shapes that never ever existed, let alone in 1537!, at present on display at the Mary Rose Museum Portsmouth). Résumé: The lock mechanism does, in all probability, not originally belong and should consequently be removed. Presented together as a unity, this 'unholy' union evokes the impression of a unanimous gun - which definitley is put at dispute. Please see also my thread on Henry VIII's two breechloading arquebuses, one dated 1537, the other ca. 1540: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...634#post164634 Best, Michael Attached Images Last edited by Matchlock; 30th December 2013 at 01:06 PM.

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17th November 2013, 01:13 PM	#2
cornelistromp Member Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 1,068	Hi Michael, very good to see you again here on the forum the pommel of the landknechtsword is of Norman Type 13, a pommel engraved with rays diverging from the base to give the appearance of a stylished cockleshell. this type appeared from 1470-1640. something like the dagger posted here http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16452 if I'm not sure if the pan cover button portrays a shell and whether there is some kind of a relation with the pommel. Do you think that the whole wheelock dates back around 1570 and therefor is a subsequent replacement ? best,

29th December 2013, 06:42 PM	#6
Matchlock (deceased) Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking Posts: 4,310	I know, 'Nando, Still I got to get this here done, and I did. Best, Michl