Militaria I Collection

The Militaria I collection comprises around 30,000 weapons, suits of armour and military equipment dating from late antiquity to the recent past. Among the outstanding items are the historical weapons collection of Prince Carl of Prussia (1801–1883), parts of the experimental collection of the gunsmith Nikolaus von Dreyse (1787–1867), artefacts from the Spandau Military Shooting School, and parts of the Ettersburg hunting weapons collection of the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar.

In its early days, the collection was housed in the Berlin Zeughaus (Armoury), built in 1695. Alongside weapons, the building also stored trophies and illustrative military material belonging to the Brandenburg-Prussian army. In the 19th century, the armoury was transformed into a memorial site and military museum; from 1920 to 1940, it formed part of the Berlin State Museums. Items from the Militaria collections that were not dispersed or destroyed during the Second World War became a sub-collection of the MfDG in 1952 and were transferred to the DHM in 1990.