Armeemarschsammlung

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The Armeemarschsammlung, or Army March Collection, is the main catalog of German military marches. It began with a royal order from King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1817 to pick proven marching tunes for every infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiment, so on ceremonial occasions only good marches would be played.

The first collection had 36 slow and 36 quick infantry marches. It later included Prussian, Austrian, and Russian marches and was released in three parts. The cavalry section started being published in Berlin in 1824 and continued by other publishers. These marches carried an official number: a Roman numeral for the collection and an Arabic number for the list.

Austria also created a formal march collection, completed in 1898. It included 49 marches (36 regimental marches) plus artillery and navy tunes. By 1914 there were many marches for different regiments, including special regiments in Tyrol.

In 1925, the Reichswehr ordered a new Army March Collection under Hermann Schmidt, the army’s music chief. Old and new marches from the former German states were merged into this collection. After World War II, the collection was divided into four groups. In 1929 a Group IV was added, and in 1933 the collection was renamed Heeresmarschsammlung (the Army March Collection for the Army). Some marches appear in both the original and revised collections. The Luftwaffe contributed one march, Flieger-Parade, in 1933, and the navy contributed several others.

Some famous march composers (like Blankenburg, Blon, Eilenberg, Friedemann, Stieberitz, and Teike) are not well represented in the collection. Reasons include years of service, the idea that their pieces were more suited to concert performance, or that their marches were more technically difficult.

In the early 1960s, Wilhelm Stephan updated the collection again, keeping the older numbering: Collection I had marches 1–53, Collection II had 101–164, and Collection III had 201–235, totaling 152 marches.

Over time, many original editions were lost or damaged, especially during the destruction of archives in 1945. Today, military bands in the Bundeswehr and other groups work to preserve the collection, and several recordings exist of marches from these sets.