Armin
10-04-2005, 12:31 PM
Hi to all!
As a speciel x-mas-present to hungman and hoping that Cang Long has his coffee ready, I try to give you all more details of how 'the scene' developped in Germany and Europe.
Unce upon a time - it was 1972 - a young german and several others found the 'Budozirkel Kiel'. They trained Judo and Karate and several other styles this young man had experience in. His name was Keith Ronald Kernspecht. He was the son of a circus-magician, was well-trained in wrestling and had muscles like big Arni.
Several years later, young Kernspecht started searching for some 'real Kung Fu'. He met a teacher in London/GB, that taught something that was called 'wing chun'. But this teacher wasn't willing to let young Kernspecht teach (so the people guess today), that's why he tried to get hold of another one. A young student of Leung Sheung namend Leung Ting. This man claimed to be the inheritor of ol' Yip Man - THE great-grandmaster of wing chun. He even had some photos of himself, the 10th dan in chinese karate, and THE great-grandmaster of wing chun (ok, they were fake, as we know today, but hey - it worked).
Keith R. Kernspecht (in the following only KRK) invited Leung Ting (in the following only LT) to Germany and that's how the famous European Wing Tsun Organisation, or short the EWTO began. KRK, holding the 8th or 9th students-degree (after 2 or 3 years) started teaching on his own - what he didn't know, he just made up - until his sifu corrected it.
The idea of KRK was, to build the biggest organisation for intelligent and esp. working self-defense. But there weren't too many students. So what to do? Young KRK had the solution: he and his students did train the 'easy but working' techniques, like chain-punches and frontkick, and did some special 'anti-other-systems'-training. Now they were able to visit schools of other systems and they challenged the teachers!
Most of the challenges were won - except of some, namely the challenge of Maître Tung, a former black-dragon in the Vietnam-war and a master of Viet Vo Dao. He promised KRK in a phone-call that, if that would happen again, he'll visit KRK with his two axes.
That brought masses of new students. Training was very technical these days - I remember courses were we trained the tan sao for more than four hours (that was in 1991).
But soon, KRK wasn't very pleased. His aim was, to build groups with doctors, professors and of course police-officers. But with his marketing idea, he just got the average 'beat-em-up' from the street. So, there had to be new ideas.
That's when he started to teach his 'intelligent'-system of giving way to power. Through superior use of the brain and understanding the concepts, one was supposed to able to beat every possible enemy - including Mike Tyson, Bruce Lee and so on.
Mentioning Bruce Lee. Do you know why the EWTO struggles to say what Bruce Lee learned and what not? E. g. they say, that Bruce never really learned the Biu Dji or the wooden dummy - why? Because the average teacher of the EWTO, who learned this stuff knows more than Bruce - that gives the image of these guys being better than Bruce.
Back to the 1980s. Again, KRK wasn't happy. He had some argues with his sifu and he tried to figure out, how to get rid of him (in private he called him 'yellow rat', and that kind of kind words). That's when he contacted one of Bruce Lee's students. They met and KRK invented what is called the 'pak sao-punch'-program. A usefull tool to prepare students for chi sao (I'm still convinced of this method of partner-training - it's fast, it's powerful, it's fun!).
But things got better - so he and his sifu stayed together.
In the late 1990s things started getting bad again. There were less students coming, something had to be done. That's when LT got a special present of an old Fatshan-resident: a hand-written book with what he called the 'health siu nim tao'. One student of KRK, Roland Liebscher-Bracht, invented the WT-Chi-Kung programs, something like 'proggressive muscle-relaxation' light. The idea was, to build 'health-groups'. Why? Again very easy: the health-insurances did pay very good for people being able to give courses.
After the insurances stopped paying for that - the whole health-idea died. But KRK was a lucky man - meanwhile there was another trend he could follow. A man called Billy Blanks started teaching 'Tae Bo' - a mixture of karate and Aerobic (Billy Blanks was well-known as Karate-champion before). Well, if Karate and Aerobic worked together, why not WT and Aerobic - and 'Frequen-Chi' was born (again under Roland Liebscher-Bracht).
But KRK knew that there had to be done more than this. He tried to concentrate back on the stuff, that WT was meant for. Self-defence is spelled WT, that's what he always said. Why shouldn't there be something like 'WT light' for the beginners, so they could denfend themselves even earlier?! Again he made something up - WT Blitz-Defence (something that was copied very often).
Ok, that in short was the evolution of the EWTO. Now, let's take a look what happened inbetween the dates.
It all began with a guy called Phillip Bayer. He lost some fingers in an accident and he was told, that there would be no way for him, to teach WT. Phillip wasn't satisfied with this, so he booked a flight to Hongkong and started searching for a teacher. Finally, he found his sifu: Wong Shun Leung. But oh wonder! Wong Shun Leung taught something totally different to what Phillip knew from the EWTO! Wong Shun Leung's system was logical and easier to apply.
Well, it got known very fast in the EWTO that Phillip found someone new - and the EWTO started throwing dirt at him and his sifu. 'Singel-handed cripple' was one of the nicer words the EWTO used.
Today, Phillip Bayer still teaches the Ving Tsun he learned from his sifu Wong Shun Leung.
Shortly after Phillip another guy left the EWTO. His name was Birrol Özden a young turkish 3rd technican. KRK and LT spread the rumour (or better: the lie), that the name 'WT' was internationally protected by copyright law. Well, that's not possible - WT is not a brand, it's a generic name, like Karate. What they could protect was e. g. 'Leung Ting WT'. Well, poor Birrol believed in that lie - and so he started calling his system 'Ving Chun'.
Well, I got to be a little carefull now with what I say. It seems, that Birrol Özden started to gain a huge control over his students. Some people, who tried to leave his organisation (esp. the teachers), were bullied around and their families were threatened (like 'we now where your children go to school' - and in some cases, it looks like the children were away for some days - until the parents did pay money).
Birrol had to struggle hard. He had only 3 or 4 running schools (the 150 others were planned to open for more than 10 years). So he needed some ideas to make money. So, people were forced to buy training-accessoirs that did cost twice as much as you normally pay, they weren't allowed to bring something to drink to courses - they had to pay 'sifu's drinks', and so.
In the end of the 1980s another teacher left the EWTO and found his own sifu: Wilhelm Blech now followed Lok Yiu. Again, the machinery of the EWTO started working and very bad things were said about Wilhelm.
In 1994 another highly-ranked teacher left the EWTO: Klaus Dingeldein had to leave the EWTO right before he passed the test to the masters-degree. Well, rumours say, that he was a pimp (and he still is). In 1998 or 1999 Klaus Dingeldein found his own organisation - the European Ving Tsun Federation (EVTF), thus calling his style VT. He is a damn good fighter (he was the partner of Emin Boztepe for a very long time) and he is one of the best technicians I've ever seen.
Shortly after Klaus, another high-ranked teacher left the EWTO - this time, because he did advertisement in the region of another sifu and the people think that he lead an assault on this sifu. Salih Avci was the only high-ranked teacher coming from the biggest minority in Germany. He calls his style 'Avci-WT'. His style is very aggressive and they train a lot of groundfighting.
Than the big bang! Emin Boztepe, super-fighter of the EWTO, was fired from the EWTO. He was the one, who fought against William Cheung and he was the one who challenged the Gracies (of course, there was no fight). He was the first after KRK to earn the 6th master-degree. Why was he fired? Well, he didn't pay his licence-money to LT. That's all folks - he didn't pay.
Today, Emin runs his own organisation - the 'Emin Boztepe Martial Arts System' (EBMAS).
But even more sorrow did another loss bring: at the same time Rene Latosa left the EWTO. He was GGM of Eskrima. What was his problem? Quite eay. KRK advocated WT as the weaponless fighting-system and Eskrima as the system with weapons. But Eskrima has a weaponless-system that could compare its effectiveness with WT. So, KRK forced Rene to stop teaching the weaponless parts of his system!
And now it got worse and worse. A young technician managed to get some extra-training from LT and he said the words, that everyone already had in the back of his head. KRK didn't teach everything LT taught him. KRK was keeping secret techniques to himself. KRK only wanted the money. And so on. So, suddenly there was a teacher who knew everything (he had a certification of LT, saying that he learned the whole weaponless WT from LT). A lot of students, teachers, technicians and even masters took a look at this guy and followed him. His name was Sergio Idarola. In one night, so it seems, the EWTO lost Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and half of the other european countries to him.
But he was too willing to give his knowledge away. The 'masters' that followed, took what they could - and half a year or one year later they left him again, founding their own organisations.
You see, there's a lot that happened - but I didn't mention the hundreds or thousands of teachers (like me) that left the EWTO and started their own small thing. They call it WT, VT, WC, Wing Tjun, Ving Dschunn, Tao Concepts, and so on, and so on.
And now the problem: how to distinguish the schools that teach 'real wing chun' from the EWTO-offshoots (being honestly: WT s***s - as most already know!)? There are at least 20 different VT-organisations, two or three of them are 'real VT' - all others are WT with another name.
And that's when the family-tree comes into the game - and of course the internet-community. People have to search for a special person and ask others about this person in the different forums. After that, someone can say, that he learns 'real Ving Tsun'.
Feel free to question!!!
Armin.
As a speciel x-mas-present to hungman and hoping that Cang Long has his coffee ready, I try to give you all more details of how 'the scene' developped in Germany and Europe.
Unce upon a time - it was 1972 - a young german and several others found the 'Budozirkel Kiel'. They trained Judo and Karate and several other styles this young man had experience in. His name was Keith Ronald Kernspecht. He was the son of a circus-magician, was well-trained in wrestling and had muscles like big Arni.
Several years later, young Kernspecht started searching for some 'real Kung Fu'. He met a teacher in London/GB, that taught something that was called 'wing chun'. But this teacher wasn't willing to let young Kernspecht teach (so the people guess today), that's why he tried to get hold of another one. A young student of Leung Sheung namend Leung Ting. This man claimed to be the inheritor of ol' Yip Man - THE great-grandmaster of wing chun. He even had some photos of himself, the 10th dan in chinese karate, and THE great-grandmaster of wing chun (ok, they were fake, as we know today, but hey - it worked).
Keith R. Kernspecht (in the following only KRK) invited Leung Ting (in the following only LT) to Germany and that's how the famous European Wing Tsun Organisation, or short the EWTO began. KRK, holding the 8th or 9th students-degree (after 2 or 3 years) started teaching on his own - what he didn't know, he just made up - until his sifu corrected it.
The idea of KRK was, to build the biggest organisation for intelligent and esp. working self-defense. But there weren't too many students. So what to do? Young KRK had the solution: he and his students did train the 'easy but working' techniques, like chain-punches and frontkick, and did some special 'anti-other-systems'-training. Now they were able to visit schools of other systems and they challenged the teachers!
Most of the challenges were won - except of some, namely the challenge of Maître Tung, a former black-dragon in the Vietnam-war and a master of Viet Vo Dao. He promised KRK in a phone-call that, if that would happen again, he'll visit KRK with his two axes.
That brought masses of new students. Training was very technical these days - I remember courses were we trained the tan sao for more than four hours (that was in 1991).
But soon, KRK wasn't very pleased. His aim was, to build groups with doctors, professors and of course police-officers. But with his marketing idea, he just got the average 'beat-em-up' from the street. So, there had to be new ideas.
That's when he started to teach his 'intelligent'-system of giving way to power. Through superior use of the brain and understanding the concepts, one was supposed to able to beat every possible enemy - including Mike Tyson, Bruce Lee and so on.
Mentioning Bruce Lee. Do you know why the EWTO struggles to say what Bruce Lee learned and what not? E. g. they say, that Bruce never really learned the Biu Dji or the wooden dummy - why? Because the average teacher of the EWTO, who learned this stuff knows more than Bruce - that gives the image of these guys being better than Bruce.
Back to the 1980s. Again, KRK wasn't happy. He had some argues with his sifu and he tried to figure out, how to get rid of him (in private he called him 'yellow rat', and that kind of kind words). That's when he contacted one of Bruce Lee's students. They met and KRK invented what is called the 'pak sao-punch'-program. A usefull tool to prepare students for chi sao (I'm still convinced of this method of partner-training - it's fast, it's powerful, it's fun!).
But things got better - so he and his sifu stayed together.
In the late 1990s things started getting bad again. There were less students coming, something had to be done. That's when LT got a special present of an old Fatshan-resident: a hand-written book with what he called the 'health siu nim tao'. One student of KRK, Roland Liebscher-Bracht, invented the WT-Chi-Kung programs, something like 'proggressive muscle-relaxation' light. The idea was, to build 'health-groups'. Why? Again very easy: the health-insurances did pay very good for people being able to give courses.
After the insurances stopped paying for that - the whole health-idea died. But KRK was a lucky man - meanwhile there was another trend he could follow. A man called Billy Blanks started teaching 'Tae Bo' - a mixture of karate and Aerobic (Billy Blanks was well-known as Karate-champion before). Well, if Karate and Aerobic worked together, why not WT and Aerobic - and 'Frequen-Chi' was born (again under Roland Liebscher-Bracht).
But KRK knew that there had to be done more than this. He tried to concentrate back on the stuff, that WT was meant for. Self-defence is spelled WT, that's what he always said. Why shouldn't there be something like 'WT light' for the beginners, so they could denfend themselves even earlier?! Again he made something up - WT Blitz-Defence (something that was copied very often).
Ok, that in short was the evolution of the EWTO. Now, let's take a look what happened inbetween the dates.
It all began with a guy called Phillip Bayer. He lost some fingers in an accident and he was told, that there would be no way for him, to teach WT. Phillip wasn't satisfied with this, so he booked a flight to Hongkong and started searching for a teacher. Finally, he found his sifu: Wong Shun Leung. But oh wonder! Wong Shun Leung taught something totally different to what Phillip knew from the EWTO! Wong Shun Leung's system was logical and easier to apply.
Well, it got known very fast in the EWTO that Phillip found someone new - and the EWTO started throwing dirt at him and his sifu. 'Singel-handed cripple' was one of the nicer words the EWTO used.
Today, Phillip Bayer still teaches the Ving Tsun he learned from his sifu Wong Shun Leung.
Shortly after Phillip another guy left the EWTO. His name was Birrol Özden a young turkish 3rd technican. KRK and LT spread the rumour (or better: the lie), that the name 'WT' was internationally protected by copyright law. Well, that's not possible - WT is not a brand, it's a generic name, like Karate. What they could protect was e. g. 'Leung Ting WT'. Well, poor Birrol believed in that lie - and so he started calling his system 'Ving Chun'.
Well, I got to be a little carefull now with what I say. It seems, that Birrol Özden started to gain a huge control over his students. Some people, who tried to leave his organisation (esp. the teachers), were bullied around and their families were threatened (like 'we now where your children go to school' - and in some cases, it looks like the children were away for some days - until the parents did pay money).
Birrol had to struggle hard. He had only 3 or 4 running schools (the 150 others were planned to open for more than 10 years). So he needed some ideas to make money. So, people were forced to buy training-accessoirs that did cost twice as much as you normally pay, they weren't allowed to bring something to drink to courses - they had to pay 'sifu's drinks', and so.
In the end of the 1980s another teacher left the EWTO and found his own sifu: Wilhelm Blech now followed Lok Yiu. Again, the machinery of the EWTO started working and very bad things were said about Wilhelm.
In 1994 another highly-ranked teacher left the EWTO: Klaus Dingeldein had to leave the EWTO right before he passed the test to the masters-degree. Well, rumours say, that he was a pimp (and he still is). In 1998 or 1999 Klaus Dingeldein found his own organisation - the European Ving Tsun Federation (EVTF), thus calling his style VT. He is a damn good fighter (he was the partner of Emin Boztepe for a very long time) and he is one of the best technicians I've ever seen.
Shortly after Klaus, another high-ranked teacher left the EWTO - this time, because he did advertisement in the region of another sifu and the people think that he lead an assault on this sifu. Salih Avci was the only high-ranked teacher coming from the biggest minority in Germany. He calls his style 'Avci-WT'. His style is very aggressive and they train a lot of groundfighting.
Than the big bang! Emin Boztepe, super-fighter of the EWTO, was fired from the EWTO. He was the one, who fought against William Cheung and he was the one who challenged the Gracies (of course, there was no fight). He was the first after KRK to earn the 6th master-degree. Why was he fired? Well, he didn't pay his licence-money to LT. That's all folks - he didn't pay.
Today, Emin runs his own organisation - the 'Emin Boztepe Martial Arts System' (EBMAS).
But even more sorrow did another loss bring: at the same time Rene Latosa left the EWTO. He was GGM of Eskrima. What was his problem? Quite eay. KRK advocated WT as the weaponless fighting-system and Eskrima as the system with weapons. But Eskrima has a weaponless-system that could compare its effectiveness with WT. So, KRK forced Rene to stop teaching the weaponless parts of his system!
And now it got worse and worse. A young technician managed to get some extra-training from LT and he said the words, that everyone already had in the back of his head. KRK didn't teach everything LT taught him. KRK was keeping secret techniques to himself. KRK only wanted the money. And so on. So, suddenly there was a teacher who knew everything (he had a certification of LT, saying that he learned the whole weaponless WT from LT). A lot of students, teachers, technicians and even masters took a look at this guy and followed him. His name was Sergio Idarola. In one night, so it seems, the EWTO lost Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and half of the other european countries to him.
But he was too willing to give his knowledge away. The 'masters' that followed, took what they could - and half a year or one year later they left him again, founding their own organisations.
You see, there's a lot that happened - but I didn't mention the hundreds or thousands of teachers (like me) that left the EWTO and started their own small thing. They call it WT, VT, WC, Wing Tjun, Ving Dschunn, Tao Concepts, and so on, and so on.
And now the problem: how to distinguish the schools that teach 'real wing chun' from the EWTO-offshoots (being honestly: WT s***s - as most already know!)? There are at least 20 different VT-organisations, two or three of them are 'real VT' - all others are WT with another name.
And that's when the family-tree comes into the game - and of course the internet-community. People have to search for a special person and ask others about this person in the different forums. After that, someone can say, that he learns 'real Ving Tsun'.
Feel free to question!!!
Armin.