When I started my work in 2015, the Marksmenship was declared by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage in Germany. According to the statement: „The Marksmenship is in many places an important, historical and living part of the regional or local identity.“ The origin of these clubs goes back to the civil defense in the Middle Ages. Annual weapon exercises and shooting competitions developed to today‘s Makrsmen‘s festival. In the Sauerland this tradition is very widely practiced and passed on. Each village has its own club and its own festival. But Marksmen‘s clubs are facing more and more problems in the conventional practice of their tradition.
In this thesis, I first give an introduction to the history of the marksmen and show developments up to the modern age. I deal with club foundations and give a deeper insight to the marksmens at the time of Nazism, until today.
Furthermore, I deal extensively with the concepts of tradition and home and examine the motto of the Marksmen „faith, custom, home“ and its relevance today. Then I explain my personal relationship and attitude to the subject, how this has changed and how much the work has influenced me. After this theoretical part, I approach myself as a photographer, explain my photographic attitude and approach, in order to come to the implementation and presentation form.
At some point while working on this topic, I wondered: How often can a tradition be adapted and changed until it loses its essence? What is the essence of a Marksmen‘s festival and when is it no longer a Marksmen‘s festival? Consequently, I put forward the following thesis: The Marksmen‘s clubs in the Sauerland are based less and less on their origin, turn away from it and will in the future, also due to lack of care and passing on of their traditions, not be able to exercise their tradition in the conventional way. In the course of the thesis, I will point out arguments for and against this thesis in order to come to my conclusions.