Karl of Germany, as Karl Lechten is widely hailed here, does not want to discuss what he did for a living before he became apparently this country’s only professional plattner.
And because Lechten is a strapping 6 feet 4 inches tall and spends his days bending steel with his bare hands–occasionally assisted by a blowtorch–only a real Braveheart would dare press the question.
Let us then not aggravate a large man with ready access to broadswords. Instead, we will be appropriately chivalrous to Karl of Germany, who has revived the Old World art of hand-crafting highly ornate ceremonial suits of armor for collectors, businesses and knights-in-wanting who otherwise might have to settle for Tin-Man knockoffs.
Although the occasional 16th Century gauntlet or Holy Roman Empire shield does come on the market from time to time, the world’s supply of genuine full suits of medieval armor is fairly scant, according to Constanze Doerr, an expert in arms and armor for Sotheby’s in New York City.
“Many people have to buy a helmet here and a gauntlet there and try to match it,” she said.
A great many of the steel armor suits produced in central Europe from the 15th to the 17th Centuries–whether for combat or formalwear–have either rusted into dust or were melted down in time of war when metals were scarce.
The full armor ensembles that have survived in good condition are generally held in museums or private collections. When the rare suit of ancient armor does go on the auction block, it likely brings a price in the $50,000-to-$150,000 range, according to Doerr.
And so, for the last five years, Karl of Germany in Wisconsin has been pounding out a unique niche in the medieval market, creating new European antiquities in a suburban warehouse.
“There may be some who attempt to do it on a smaller scale, but Karl is one of a kind. Nobody else in this country endeavors to make a head-to-toe suit of armor,” said Don MacNeal, a Chicago mortgage banker and armor collector who has seen Lechten’s work.
Madison’s professional plattner will make a suit of armor, using traditional methods, for around $40,000. Or, if you’re not a purist and don’t mind his taking a few modern shortcuts, you can pay roughly one-tenth that price–say, $4,000–for the fully etched Baron von Finkelstein model. Helmet included.
That is an extremely reasonable price for ceremonial armor, claimed Lechten, who noted that Emperor Maximillian I (1459-1519) once bought a similar suit of armor for the then-astronomical price of 26 cows. At today’s bovine exchange rate, that would be in excess of $350,000, according to Lechten’s calculations.
Each suit of armor Lechten produces is a unique creation, not a reproduction, he hastened to add. “When people mention `reproductions,’ I die,” he said. “They are not reproductions. They are one of a kind.”
Most armor suits seen on display at Renaissance fairs and Camelot-theme restaurants are factory-produced, “forged and stamped” reproductions made from molds taken of genuine armor, Lechten said.
His armor follows authentic Middle Age design, but is otherwise original. Lechten is a perfectionist who makes his own tools based on those depicted in ancient woodcut drawings found in his European research.
Armor-making is not light work. It takes Lechten about three months to handcraft one of his elaborately decorated suits, “and that is working 14- to 16-hour days,” he said.
Armor-making is labor-intensive not just because of the steel molding that must be done, he said, but also because it involves intricate etching and embossing work. Lechten works from ancient patterns bearing the names of the knights who wore them–everything from the aforementioned Baron von Finkelstein to the Archbishop Fechenbach and Maximillian Harnisch models.
“I do the etching exactly the way it has always been done, except that when I draw it on initially, I do it with Magic Markers and an artist’s pen,” he said.
Karl will also customize the etchings on your suit of armor, depicting your family crest, your family or your own particular honored maiden, whether fair or foul.
“I can make a 15th Century etching, or I can put a picture of your mother-in-law, or Madonna, anything you like,” he said.
His armor is museum-quality, he insisted, “not the stuff for people to play knights in. My suits are purchased as corporate art, by collectors, and those who view it as an investment.”
Madison lawyer Joe Kuemmel, who has collected antique armor for 23 years, owns a gold-embossed Karl of Germany suit of armor. He said Lechten’s work so closely resembles that of the medieval masters that it has fooled more than one expert.
Obsessive quest
“Karl’s goal in life is to produce the best suit of armor ever made, and he is totally dedicated to it,” said Kuemmel.
Lechten admitted that he is so obsessed with his craft that he can hardly stand to look at his own work, for fear of finding imperfection.
“I want to someday make a suit of the quality you find in the Metropolitan Museum,” he said. “I want the work to be my legacy. There is a certain satisfaction in putting your stamp on a piece of armor that will be around longer than you will.”
A native of Bremen, Germany, Lechten came to Madison nearly 30 years ago, after meeting his wife, Mary, a native of Wales, who was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin here. For two decades, the couple, who have three grown children, operated a chain of prominent businesses, the nature of which Karl said he “vould die” rather than discuss.
Whatever it was, it drove both of them crazy with its “prima donna employees.” And so, in the late 1980s, they became fed up and sold out, he said.
Mary returned to her passion for teaching special-education students. Karl, a restless, creative type who built his own home and has published collections of his Madison-area photography, eventually decided he wanted to work a knight job.
“I hit a midlife crisis,” he said in trying to explain the decision. “At first, I thought I might like to go to Europe and buy antique armor and sell it here, but I found there isn’t much armor around anymore.”
Having grown up in a 1,300-year-old European city, Karl was as familiar with medieval armor “as people here are with Indians,” he said.
An irrepressible workshop tinkerer, he was intrigued by the beauty and complexity of the ancient craft. “Looking back, I think I was interested in this because of the challenge,” he said. “It has been said that in the days of the original plattners, armor-making evolved from a boilerplate job into a fine art.”
In starting his crusade to create the perfect suit of armor, Lechten returned to Europe to study ancient texts describing the plattner’s art and to view perhaps the world’s greatest collection of armor in the Tower of London.
Eventually, he realized that he needed to get some hands-on training to truly learn the plattner craft. Lechten searched for a master armor-maker and learned that there were only four still working. All were in Europe, and none appeared interested in sharing trade secrets.
Determined, he selected as his plattner mentor Heins Schneider of Wurzburg, Germany, a world-renowned armor-maker skilled in the traditional ways of forging. Schneider has made suits of armor for nearly 50 years, including two displayed in the Tower of London. He often works for European royalty and museums.
In medieval times, the only way to learn the plattner’s art was to become an indentured servant to a master armor-maker. Lechten discovered a handwritten constitution from the 15th Century Landshut Plattner Guild in which the bylaws required a rigorous apprenticeship and final examination and then each apprentice had to provide written proof “that he was born within wedlock” to obtain guild membership.
Apparently, bastard plattners were verboten. But meisterplattners were held in high social esteem and often granted titles, Lechten said. “The plattner profession was a highly honored one. Even today, many of the best have titles or are honored citizens of their cities.”
At the master’s door
The aspiring armor-maker decided the only way he was going to learn was to stage a siege on the castle of his reluctant mentor. “I begged and pleaded with him in letters, and when he did not answer, I finally said, `What the heck,’ and went to see him in Germany,” he said.
In the end, it was a bankroll, not a battering ram, that got Lechten in Schneider’s door. He became the master’s indentured student for the towering fee of nearly $100,000, according to Lechten, who spent two years in training at Schneider’s studio in a 15th Century blacksmith’s shop.
“And that was just to learn the basics,” said Lechten, who admitted that he has “gone way overboard getting into this.” Even with his expensive training and extensive research, it has been a struggle to establish himself in the plattner business here, said Lechten, who recently had to sell off two suits of armor from his own collection to meet the college expenses of his youngest son and daughter.
“I’ve been told if I was in Europe, I’d already be on top. It’s no piece of cake getting a name for yourself in America when you are in the middle of the cornfields,” he said.
As a sideline, Lechten also rents suits of armor he has made, and he hopes to build up enough stock to become the Seno of armature, renting to businesses, conventions, movie studios and to those who can’t afford armor in the closet. Not that all of his current customers are high-rollers.
Poland-born Chris Mika, 34, of Arlington Heights, is a United Parcel Service driver who believes there was a wild knight in his past–and perhaps his future too.
“I went to a psychic who believes in reincarnation, and she told me that I was happiest in a past life when I’d been a knight,” said Mika, who saved for more than four years to buy his custommade suit of armor from Lechten.
“When I find the girl of my dreams, I might try to propose to her in my suit of armor,” he said gallantly.
Fulfilling fantasies is a big part of Lechten’s art, he said, and as long as he can do it, he will never be inclined to return to his previous occupation, which he finally agreed to reveal after considerable jousting.
“OK, we owned a string of four international hair salons here in Madison,” he confessed. “We had hairdressers from Singapore, Sweden, Egypt, all over the world.”
He did hair himself, as Karl of Germany, Lechten admitted.
“But I was not your typical hairdresser,” he said.
