Hammerschlagen. Hammerschlagen (also called Stump or  [German lit. 'nail beam']), is a game in which participants compete against each other to drive nails into a wooden beam.  

Competitive nailing can be a solo game.  However, the most common form is as a competition between several individuals, the winner of which gets a prize.

Origins 
According to Florian Dering, a museologist at the Munich Stadtmuseum, the nail beam game as folk amusement has been around since the 1920s. This driving of nails into dimensional lumber has been used by showmen and charities to raise money, and also at weddings to have the newly married couple show their skills to the audience.

Dering reports a series of administrative regulations: the vertical cross-section of the plank should be at least 12 cm by 12 cm, and have no knots or protruding branches.  Several hammers are used, each having a mass of at least 400 g and a handle length of at least 30 cm.  The nails provided should have a round (but not smooth) head, and be at least two inches long.  The nail bar is usually mounted at table height and secured to sawhorses by way of screw clamps.  

WRB Inc. claims the owner of Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter in Saint Paul, Carl Schoene, invented the game. Schoene's father-in-law, Mike Wlaschin, claimed to come up with the Hammerschlagen name. In 1999, Wlaschin founded WRB which has a trademarked the name Hammer-Schlagen and the game design trade dress. While company acknowledges iterations of the nail-driving game existed prior to Schoene, they have used their trademark to take legal action on restaurants and bars and other businesses that fail to sign licensing agreements with the company.

Hammerschlagen today

United States 
In the United States, the game is often played while consuming beer and is associated with tailgate parties, German cultural events and Oktoberfest celebrations, and beer festivals in the Upper Midwest. Commonly, a tree trunk is used in place of the wooden beam.

Germany 
It can be found as a game of leisure at events and festivals, often for children and as a wedding custom.

For Expo 2000, the Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin in Dortmund presented the Exhibition Of The Labor World to demonstrate different aspects of workplace security.  A hammerschlagen area was provided to demonstrate a person's physical competence.  Among many other things at the exhibition, the "Living And Working World" area in which the nail bar appeared dealt with the intellectual, psychological, physical, and social competence of people, which was implemented scenographically in four so-called "elementary spaces":  four cubic, monomaterially formed spaces that were meant to arouse the senses by way of light, sounds, artistic ciphers, and smells.

See also 
 Stock im Eisen, an art piece that was used as fund-raising tool during the First World War. For a fee, a single nail could be partially driven into the figure. When completed, the figure would be transformed from wood to metal.

References

Further reading

External links 
 Helge Normann, "Das Geheimnis des Nagelbalkens", Wochenspiegel, 26 June 2010 (with video) 
 Postenzettel (scorecard) for a Nagelbalken contest (PDF) 

Sports entertainment
Culture of Bavaria