Marsch von Problus und Prim [German march]

Composed by Heinrich Laudenbach in 1866.

To whom do the places Problus, Nieder-, Ober- or Neuprim mean anything nowadays? Who knows the forest of Stezirek, which surrounds these places to the south; in general the entire Bohemian region in the semicircular arc around the small town of Königgrätz, in which on hot July days of the year 1866 the German Confederation and thus Germany's further future already began to fundamentally emerge and was to be steered into almost predetermined "Bismarckian" courses? After this bloody decisive battle of the "German (Brotherly) War" with its more than 7,000 casualties and many thousands of wounded, nothing was the same as before. The dream of a unified "Greater Germany" encompassing all Germans, as still cherished by both the educated bourgeoisie and the revolutionaries of '48, a Germany as an all-embracing nation in its own nation-state with a constituted people of the same tongue "from the Meuse to the Memel and from the Adige to the Belt" - a pious dream for the foreseeable future. Austria, which had provided the German emperors for centuries, had to leave the German Confederation and with it Germany - if one may say so. A new North German Confederation under the hegemony of Prussia was constituted in order to culminate a few years later (1871) in the 2nd ("Kleindeutsche") Reich. On July 3, 1866, the towns of Problus and Prim were only a secondary theater of war.

The towns of Problus and Prim, however, were only secondary theaters of war on July 3, 1866. Despite the fierce fighting between the entire Prussian army consisting of the 14th, 15th and 16th divisions and the strong Austro-Saxon forces, which occupied the high ground above the Bistritz River as their left flank, a frontal attack of the Rhenish Infantry Regiment 68 against the village of Problus, which could also be taken, brought the entire Austrian front line along this Austrian left flank into motion. In panic-like flight, many troop units flooded in a southeasterly direction toward the fortress of Königgrätz. Only the doggedly fighting Saxons were able to stabilize the front. The breakthrough was sealed off and until the end of the fighting the front line was held with heavy losses.

The battle itself then had to be decided elsewhere, at the junction between Prussian 1st and 2nd Armies during the fierce fighting around the village of Chlum.

In the midst of these battles of the Rhinelanders, Westphalia and East Prussia against resolutely defending Saxons and some remaining Austrian units around these tactically important towns of Problus and Prim: Heinrich Laudenbach (1827-1907), the composer of this march. He was a native of Holstein. And we know him, the later royal music director, whose military musical work is inseparably connected with the music corps of the East Prussian Fusilier Regiment No. 33, already as the composer of AM II, 166, the Cologne Cathedral March. FR 33 was garrisoned in Cologne Fortress from 1855-1871; then in Gdansk for another 10 years, and then in Gumbinnen, East Prussia. Heinrich Laudenbach, already as a staff oboist and music master of the 33, let himself be carried away by the Cologne character in order to find his last resting and retirement place in the cathedral city after his retirement from military service (after a further station in Kevelaer on the Lower Rhine). In August 1907 he died after a tragic traffic accident in front of the Cologne main station in the nearby Vincenz Hospital. He was then buried in Kevelaer.

In 1962, Colonel Wilhelm Stephan adopted this piece for the Bundeswehr in Volume II of the Stimmbücher as AM II, 133.

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