Hundertschaft

Hundertschaft is a German term, meaning a group of a hundred, that denotes a military or police group of around one hundred members. Historically the Germanic tribes created fighting groups of one hundred men, and the term echoes the Latin centuria. It is not used in the modern German military, although the unit it names is roughly the size of a company, which is a little larger. Today it is used by the Bereitschaftspolizei, the riot police of the state police forces, and by the German Federal Police to designate company-sized police reserve units. The term therefore records an old tribal fighting formation in the army history of the Germanic peoples and survives as the name of company-sized police reserve units rather than a military one.