Stefan Dieke - Canne de combat - Germany?

Stefan Dieke is a professional instructor and researcher of historical European martial arts, running his own school, the Alte Kampfkunst – Historical European Martial Arts Academy in Wuppertal, Germany. He teaches mostly armed fighting styles spanning the Medieval period up until the First World War.

Over the past decade Stefan has taught historical European swordsmanship at many prestigious HEMA events, including ISMAC (Lansing, MI/Detroit, MI), WMAW (Amsterdam, NY/Racine, WI), SWASH (Leeds, UK), the Dreynevent (Vienna, Austria), the Australian Historical Fencing Convention (Melbourne, Australia) and the Paddy Crean Workshop (Banff, Canada).

Stefan teaches Bartitsu as a historical martial art which is useful for modern day self-defence situations. He focuses on the cane as well as scientific boxing combined with kicks from French boxing (savate). Following the Edwardian-era commentators who pointed out that many of the techniques of jiujitsu were already known in Europe centuries before Japanese fighting arts were introduced there, Stefan’s take on neo-Bartitsu’s ‘jiujitsu’ is strongly influenced by his understanding of German Medieval and Renaissance ‘Ringen’ (grappling-based unarmed combat) and dagger fighting.

Besides working from the canonical sources, Stefan’s Bartitsu also draws from contemporary sources on the arts that Barton-Wright combined into Bartitsu.