Biggi,   

I would love to sit down over steins of good beer and discuss both political and shooting history of Europe.  I've read and studied a little but you could teach me so very much.  I truly enjoy each and every one of your posts, but especially those of historical interest.

The museum exhibit that DWS referred to was one I was privileged to see in about 2004 or '05.  I was doing some volunteer work rebuilding a church in Brno, CZ Republic and on my time off had time to explore.  The city museum was hosting a temporary ("traveling?") display of targets, prizes, rifles (and some few pistols) and loading equipment for the game of Schuetzen since the earliest use of firearms (and even a couple of crossbow events, IIRC.)  There was a front room that had several large exhibits, then two rooms about 10x25 meters or so filled floor to ceiling with exhibit materials.  I got the impression that it was being carried from city to city for display and was very pleased that although it had been scheduled to have already been gone, it had been held over and I just happened to be there at the right time! 

Froggie

PS  The Museum of Technology in Budapest (near Heroes' Square) has a great Hunting display, but there was little on target shooting.  I enjoyed it, but not to the same level, I suppose.

Here is a map, which shows the situation of the area, we call nowadays "Germany". Its in 1648 after Thirty Years' War.

The German Territories were a lot of small kingdoms, duchies, dukedoms, princedoms, electorates, and so on.

A big part of Austria belonged also to German Territories. The red line borders the German Territories. But 300 years before that map, there were much more of these small territories.

As already mentioned, they made the politics by weddings, alliances, and wars.

I think weapons were still forbidden for the people, only the monarchs and sovereigns had weapons. For themselves for hunting and for their soldiers for making wars.

After the "Austro-Prussian War" in 1866, which was won by the Prussians at the "Battle of Königgrätz" (nowadays in Czech Republic), Central Europe got new borders. 

The North German Confederation was founded, this was the beginning of the strong Prussian leadership in Central Europe.

Bavaria was not a member of this North German Confederation, Bavaria was always independent. Bavarians never liked the Prussians - not in the old days, and for sure not today! 
 

Bavaria was fighting with the Austrians against the Prussians in this war, after they had to give up their neutrality. 

BTW: In those years, a real big amount of Germans left their country and immigrated to America. The Prussian treatment to their people was real bad, the people had to go hungry, because the Prussian sovereigns needed all the money for their wars. The Prussians liked wars!

In Bavaria, the people didn't like war, also the Bavarian sovereigns and kings didn't like so much the war. And the life was always not bad in Bavaria, because of the mentality of the Bavarians. It was always "Live and let live".

So the Germans with Kaiser Wilhelm were very mighty in Central Europe, also the Empire of Austria-Hungary-Monarchy with their Kaiser/Emperor Franz Joseph I.

In the Europe map 1871-1914 you can see the big territories, which belonged to the empires.

This balances of power brought a period of ca. 40 years without a serious war in Central Europe.

The Austria-Hungary-Empire was real big and covered also the kingdoms along the Adriatic Sea (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia) nearly till the border of Greece. And also the territories of Italy, Czech and Slovakia belonged to Austria-Hungary. Parts of Poland and Romania too.

These were the borders between 1871 and 1914, and then WWI began. A Serbian killer shot the "Junior-King" of Austro-Hungarian-Empire at Sarajevo in July 1914.

More then 4 years of a terrible war came all over Europe. After WWI, there was no king or kaiser enymore in Germany or Austria. The empires fell apart, after the allied forces defined the new borders. The Treaty of Versailles cut down the number of soldiers, which were allowed, they plundered the countries and the industry.

Central Europe fell in a big depression - no food, no money, no power and no king or kaiser anymore.

BTW: The King of Bavaria Ludwig III never withdraw, he gave Bavaria free for the foundation of a republic. So the Bavarians still have a king, even if he doesn't rules the state. Nowadays he is called "Boss of the royal house of Wittelsbach" and the current boss is "Herzog Franz of Bavaria". If we would have a governing king, he would be the man!

Then we had after WWII a iron curtain and the cold war in Europe. Between 1945 and 1989 the communistic dictatorships were very close to the free western Europe. 

I colored the communistic countries in red in the map, the "striped" countries belonged to the NATO. White countries were neutral.

I grew up so close to the iron curtain. One got used to the facts, that it was very difficult to travel to Eastern Europe. And that it was impossible for the East Europeans to travel to West Europe. And always the danger of the Third World War. All these US atomic weapons here in Germany to defend the freedom. Haha, after an atomic attack, nothing would have been left of Europe! Because Europe is not very large...

And that, boys and girls, is why it's going to be hard to find schuetzen in Slovenia.

Biggi, that's about the best compressed telling of 5 centuries of central European history I've come across. I especially liked your editorial additions.

Thanks for your friendly feedback, guys!   

In my historical ramble through the centuries, I skipped some wars and events. But for getting an overview of the topic, it is real okay. 

I want to add for completion: As you could see now, the territories changed very often, and also the people had to change their homelands - they often were chased out of the country, when the country borders were defined new. Sometimes the people had the choice to stay, but they lost their belongings. And after a relocation to other areas, they also lost everything.

All this happened before the industrial revolution. And before the industrial revolution came over Europe, the people were farmers, soldiers  or nothing - casually spoken. In the real old days, only the royals and dukes and princes and squires were allowed to own rifles.

So in the glory of the Austrian-Hungary-Empire, they had a lot of royal shooting clubs in the big cities. But there were not much big cities, only countryside and small neighborhoods. Mid/end of the 1800s, when industrial revolution came over the empires, also the rich factory owners had rifles. So they were allowed to shoot at the big "better-society-royal-ranges" or going for hunting.

And in Tyrol (west Austria), everybody was allowed to have a rifle since the beginning of 1500s, for practising for defending the country. They had a lot of small shooting ranges in the mountains, only wooden shelters with two or five firepoints. But after WWI and especially WWII, they were very restricted with rifles.

In the south Austrian state Carintha/Kärnten, there is the famous village Ferlach, were they manufactured since the 1500s a lot of important rifles. Also nowadays they are well known for hunting rifles. In 1641 there were 41 gunsmiths working in Ferlach - all over Bavaria there were only 16 gunsmiths in those years. In Ferlach, all the army rifles for Austria-Hungary-Empire were manufactured. But not so much target rifles, more hunting rifles.