Find a pic of a smallsword from a guy who lived 1760 - 1811 and the words are in German language
" das beste schwertz in allem streit ist gottes hûlff und zapfer keit."
"Those best swords in all ......"
Link to information

Thanks! :)

My German sucks, what little there is of it. Still, I may be able to help get a little closer... I could be TOTALLY off base.

"Streit" translates to something like conflict or contestation.
"Gottes" - God's

So, perhaps this gets us somewhere?

"the best swords in all conflicts are God's...."

Got me... I'm curious, too.

I speak exactly no German, so I cheated and plugged it into several online translation services. Each one gave me something slightly different, but the general idea was, "The best sword in all strife is God's hûlff and zapfer keit." The italicized part soundly defeated every program I threw at it.

There has to be some devoted student of Liechtenauer around here somewhere who can do better than me, though I'm tempted to run over to Barnes and Noble and just look it up in a German dictionary.

Hi guys. I can't find my german-english dictionary but "hulfen" with umlaut is "to help" in present imperfect.
I'll keep looking,W

i think i have something for "und zapfer keit " " and bravery " " och tapperhet "

"hûlff " must be an old word :) :confused:

Rough translation: the best sword for all (any ) battle is God's help and one's bravery (maybe God's courage/encouragement in place of one's bravery).

--ElJay

Very cool. The only thing I found for zapfer using my highly inferior methods was something like bartender. I thought that sounded funny. "The best sword in any battle is God's help and lots of booze." :)

:) Big Thanks guy's, it always nice to know what those words on swords says,
i have not seen this sword, i believed that the owner him self have made it, because of that "strange" dialect. :)

Sam! allot of god's booze will help to ;) :D

Another possibility would be that the engraving is in Frakturschrift (fractured script/font, most people nowadays have a really hard time to read these old letters and often confuse letters).
Maybe the museum staff got a few letters wrong. Just wild guessing on my part ;)