Travels — Northern Plains Schuetzenfest

The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam — June 2023

The Rijksmuseum is where The Night Watch hangs: Rembrandt's portrait of an Amsterdam schutterij, the civic shooting guild whose members drilled with these very arms. A few galleries away the museum keeps the guns themselves — walls of seventeenth-century muskets, wheellock rifles with stocks inlaid in mother-of-pearl and engraved bone, pistols, blunderbusses, and the mechanisms up close. The wheellock was the first lock that let a rifleman carry a loaded, ready gun and fire it with one hand free, and the Germanic gunsmiths who built these were the ancestors of the men who built the Schuetzen rifle two centuries later. Standing in front of them, the line from a Dutch guild hall to a Montana firing line is short. [Stan's own notes on the visit to come.]

The arms gallery: long guns and pistols suspended in glass, floor to ceiling.

A rank of seventeenth-century Dutch muskets and matchlocks.

More of the same wall, with the locks and stocks in profile.

Wheellock rifles, their stocks inlaid along the full length.

Long guns hung in the round, so every side can be seen.

Sporting and target guns alongside armor and edged weapons.

Rifles and carbines of several generations in one case.

A wheellock stock inlaid with engraved bone and mother-of-pearl, from butt to forend.

The same stock, close: every disc of inlay hand-cut and engraved.

Inlay detail at the wrist and cheekpiece.

Wheellock mechanisms: the wheel, the dog, and the pyrite that sparked them.

A wheellock seen from above, with the set-trigger plate beneath.

A bronze-barreled flintlock blunderbuss on its mount.

Blunderbuss and pistol barrels, flared for a load of shot.

Pistols, hangers, and a portrait: the gentleman's kit of the Golden Age.

Oktoberfest, Munich — September 2024

Oktoberfest began in 1810 as a royal wedding celebration, and shooting was part of it from the start: Bavaria's Schützen societies have marched in the opening parade and run the festival's shooting competitions for generations. The Schützen-Festzelt on the Wiesn is theirs. We went in September 2024, in lederhosen and dirndls, and did it properly: a Maß in hand, Schweinshaxe on the table, the brewery horses in their harness outside, and a few thousand new friends on the benches. [Stan's own notes to come.]

The crew, under a dinosaur balloon, which needs no explanation.

Hats, hearts, and the Hofbräu tent behind.

Inside the tent: the striped canopy, the galleries, and a very full floor.

A brewery dray horse in full Hofbräu harness outside the tent.

Schweinshaxe, the proper way to line a stomach for the evening.

Up on the benches in the Schottenhamel, Maß raised.

Seventeen seconds inside the tent: the garlands overhead, the band going, and half the room up on the benches. Tap for sound.

The song in every tent Click to hear it sung

“Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
der Gemütlichkeit!
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
der Gemütlichkeit!” “Oans, zwoa, drei — g’suffa!”

“A toast, a toast to good cheer and good company!” · “One, two, three — drink up!”

Recording: “Ein Prosit – Deutsches Wirtshauslied” by Song Warden, via the Internet Archive, CC BY 4.0. Melody and words: Georg Kunoth (1863–1927).

Ein Prosit means “a toast,” from the Latin prosit, “may it do you good.”

Gemütlichkeit has no exact English word. It is the warm, easy feeling of being among friends: good cheer, belonging, nobody in a hurry. It is the whole point of the evening.

The band plays it every fifteen or twenty minutes. The whole tent stands, raises a Maß, and sings. Then the Bavarian count-off, “Oans, zwoa, drei — g’suffa!” (“One, two, three — drink up!”), and everyone clinks glasses with everyone in reach and drinks.