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ledball wrote on Sep 25
th, 2012 at 1:59pm:
Biggi, my ancestors home town is Amberg, Germany, are there any Schuetzen matches in that area, or maybe Nurnburg. ledball
ledball, Amberg (located in North Bavaria, called Frankonia) was in the old days a famous town for rifle manufacturing. From 1801 to 1919 there was located the "Royal Bavarian Arms Factory". And a lot of gun smiths and gun makers lived there.
But nowadays, most of the tradition is gone. After WWI when there was not anymore the popular King of Bavaria and especially WWII when the occupying powers forbid all rifles and pistols (and took them to US), the old tradition died.
Only in South Bavaria and a part of Austria, the traditional friends revitalized 25 years ago the tradition to shoot with feuerstutzens and zimmerstutzens. Since the 1950s, in Germany were only held matches for air-rifle and .22 rifles.
Nowadays we have between March and November a lot of matches in South Bavaria and Austria for feuerstutzen and zimmerstutzen. But in the region of Amberg, there are not much traditional shooters. Some ML-matches are held there, but not in traditional way.
Biggi.