Martial arts: origins, practice, styles and modern significance

It can be assumed that forerunners of wrestling systems were already practiced in ancient Germania, which may also have been related to the ancient wrestling of the Roman Empire. The first documented fighting systems in German-speaking countries can be found in fencing books from the 13th century. Especially from the late Middle Ages fencing and duelling books have survived. The corresponding systems were summarized under the collective term "martial arts", whereby "-art" is meant here as a technical skill and not as an art in today's understanding. Wrestling techniques can also be found in some fencing books.

In the 20th century, Far Eastern martial arts spread more or less in waves in Germany. Erich Rahn founded the first Jiu-Jitsu school in 1906. In the same year, the first German amateur boxing club was founded in Cologne after modern boxing, originally from England, was included in the canon of the Olympic Games. Under the leadership of Alfred Rhode, the German Judo Ring was founded in 1932. The development of the post-war period was dominated by cinema blockbusters: Bruce Lee, for example, ushered in the kung fu wave in the 1970s with Enter the Dragon, and Karate Kid the popularity of Karatedō in the 1980s. Although various small groups had also practiced exotic fighting systems long before, stylistic diversification only really became noticeable in the 1990s, when Taekwondo, Taijiquan, Wing Chun, and MMA, among others, became increasingly widespread. Today, a vast variety of different styles and systems are trained and practiced in Germany.

"Martial arts" is considered an adequate translation of the Latin term "Ars Martialis", "the art of Mars", the Roman god of war (cf. martial). This term can be found in a slightly modified form in many new languages, for example "Martial Arts" (English), "Arts Martiaux" (French), "Artes marciales" (Spanish) or "Arti Marziali" (Italian).

The medieval concept of martial arts was influenced at the beginning of the 20th century, like other forms of movement and games, by the concepts of German gymnastics and Swedish gymnastics. The later introduction of the generic term "sport" from English led to the spread of the term "martial arts", which has since been used alongside "martial arts". In public perception and in parts of academia, martial arts are often associated with spiritual and artistic-aesthetic movement practice. Some authors, such as Pfeifer, distinguish martial arts as highly effective war craft with the goal of eliminating or destroying the opponent from the versporten modern martial arts. Still others subsume under martial arts all systems that do not belong to the comparatively narrow definition of martial arts, which mostly presupposes a competitive set of sports rules and corresponding comparative fights as well as championships. However, these lines of argument do not stand up to closer scrutiny. On the one hand, many systems more commonly referred to as traditional martial arts have developed competitive rulebooks (e.g., in Karatedō, Kyūdō, Iaidō, and even certain styles in Aikidō); on the other hand, the motivational structure of practitioners is not necessarily coherent with the origins of the martial art/martial sport in question. For example, Meyer identifies about 60 different practice motives for Karatedō, ranging from social, health, competitive, spiritual, to vocational, to emotional (anxiety desire and coping, power, joy of movement, flow, catharsis). These basic orientations have also been confirmed for other systems and cultures.

The multiple term structure of other languages, such as martial arts and combat sports in English or bujutsu [武術], budō [武道], bugei [武芸] and kakutogi [格 闘技] in Japanese, each with their own semantics and etymologies, as well as the definition of artificial terms, leads to further confusion in international discourse. Most influential in this regard was Draeger's division into classical (classical) and modern (modern) budō and bujutsu, which has been criticized not only for its Japan-centered derivation.