Johann Gottfried Piefke (9 September 1817 – 25 January 1884) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 conductor, Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...

and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 of military music.

Piefke was born in Schwerin an der Warthe

Skwierzyna

Skwierzyna is a town of 10,339 inhabitants in Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, the administrative seat of the Gmina Skwierzyna. It is located at the confluence of the Obra and Warta rivers, about north of Międzyrzecz and south-east of the regional capital Gorzów Wielkopolski. The town is...

 in the Grand Duchy of Posen. In the 1850s, he was Bandmaster for the 8th Infantry Regiment in Berlin. His famous marches

March (music)

A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band. In mood, marches range from the moving death march in Wagner's Götterdämmerung to the brisk military marches of John...

 include Preußens Gloria (Prussia

Kingdom of Prussia

The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...

's Glory), Düppeler Schanzen-Marsch and the Königgrätzer Marsch

Königgrätzer Marsch

The Königgrätzer Marsch is a famous German military march composed by Johann Gottfried Piefke after the Battle of Königgrätz, 1866, the decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian War, in which the Kingdom of Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire.It was one of Adolf Hitler's favorite marches and was...

(composed after the Battle of Königgratz

Battle of Königgrätz

The Battle of Königgrätz , also known as the Battle of Sadowa, Sadová, or Hradec Králové, was the decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian War, in which the Kingdom of Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire...

, 1866, the decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian War

Austro-Prussian War

The Austro-Prussian War was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with its German allies and Italy on the...

). Piefke arranged Franz Liszt's symphonic poem - Tasso for military band and may also have similarly arranged some of Liszt's marches. He died in Frankfurt (Oder)

Frankfurt (Oder)

Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located on the Oder River, on the German-Polish border directly opposite the town of Słubice which was a part of Frankfurt until 1945. At the end of the 1980s it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants...

.

Piefke received the following medals:

• Düppeler Sturmkreuz, 1864
• Golden Medal of the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, 1865
• Royal Order of the House of Hohenzollern, 1869
• Iron Cross
  Iron Cross
  The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
  
   Second Class, 1870
• Prussian Crown Order, 1880

Trivia

• "Piefke" is still today an unpleasant nickname for Germans in Austria.
• Piefke's Königgrätzer Marsch can be heard playing during the book burning
  Book burning
  Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
  
   scene in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford reprises the title role and Sean Connery plays Indiana's father, Henry...
  
  . It was one of Adolf Hitler
  Adolf Hitler
  Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
  
  's favorite marches and was often played during his public appearances.
• In Call of Duty: World at War
  Call of Duty: World at War
  Call of Duty: World at War is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. It is generally considered to be the fifth mainstream game of the Call of Duty series and returns the setting to World War II. The game was...
  
  's multiplayer, if the Wehrmacht
  Wehrmacht
  The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
  
   players win, "Königgrätzer Marsch" plays. Also, in the penultimate mission of the game's campaign mode, the song can be heard outside the Reichstag.