Naval Academy and School (Kiel)

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Drawing of the Academy from 1888
Naval Academy Kiel 1897

The Kiel Naval Academy and School was set up as a naval school in Kiel in 1866 and served the training and further education of officers of the Imperial Navy until 1910 .

prehistory

The naval school and academy had precursors in Stettin , Danzig and Berlin . There the naval cadet institute was housed in the Meyerbeer's Palais next to the Brandenburg Gate (1855) and in Matthäikirchstrasse (1857). The inland location proved to be disadvantageous, so that at the beginning of the 1860s, the move back to Gdansk and a new facility in Kiel were considered.

Kiel

After the German-Danish War , the decision was made in favor of Kiel. In 1865, two years before the unification of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein , the Düsternbrook Badeanstalt property on the Kiel Fjord , the building site of what would later become the Naval Academy, the Prussian Crown bought 104,000 thalers . According to official newspaper reports, the Prussian naval command , the naval station of the Baltic Sea and a naval academy were to be set up on the site ; But when the initially planned purchase of the Hotel Düsternbrook opposite the bathing establishment could not be realized, the site was used as a marine depot until the new building was built in the 1880s.

Muhliusstrasse

Naval School on Muliusstrasse in Kiel (1866–1888)

The Baltic Sea naval station had been in Kiel since the spring of 1865 and, among other things, used buildings in the largely undeveloped Muhliusstrasse. Since the planned use of the Düsternbrook site could not be implemented immediately for reasons of time and space, the Prussian naval administration expanded the area of ​​the naval station by purchasing land and renting buildings. When the last sea cadet passed his exam in Berlin in 1866, the sea cadet institute was closed, relocated to Kiel and housed in the building complex on the corner of Muhliusstrasse and Waisenhofstrasse. Any alterations to the building described as “gloomy” and the German War delayed the move. Lessons could not begin until the beginning of November 1866.

The first director of the school was Karl Ferdinand Batsch , at that time corvette captain and in command of the school ship SMS Niobe , who was replaced at the end of March 1867 by the sea ​​battalion - major à la suite Christian Amynt Liebe , a long-time naval cadet teacher. Liebe headed the naval school and later also the naval academy until 1881, most recently as major general. The establishment of a naval academy was decided in March 1872 after the creation of the Imperial Navy in 1871 and the Imperial Admiralty in 1872. It was also housed in the buildings on Muhliusstrasse.

The Kiel Naval School was designed for 40 sea cadets, but after four years it had 45 sea cadets and 12 second lieutenants, so that the hastily furnished rooms did not meet the requirements from the start. The housing issue worsened when the school was expanded into the Naval Academy and School in 1873 . Therefore, from the late 1860s onwards, consideration was given to relocating the facilities, which was finally implemented in the 1880s.

Task of the naval school

The lessons at the naval school covered the main part of the theoretical training of the naval officer candidates ( sea ​​cadets ) and ended with the naval officer exam, the passing of which was a prerequisite for promotion to subordinate at sea with a patent . The entrance exam for this course was so difficult that the officially recommended private preparatory institute Dr. Schlichting , who trained applicants for the entrance exam. Up until the First World War , the structure and content of the training were changed several times (1864, 1885, 1893, 1899) and in particular the duration of training, which was considerably longer than that of the Prussian Army , was shortened. The duration was reduced from initially 4½ years, including 18 months of naval school, to finally 3½ years with 12 months of naval school. From April 1867 to April 1914 a total of 5,009 naval cadets were admitted.

Mission of the Naval Academy

Naval Academy Kiel (1888-1910)

According to the regulations of May 28, 1900, the new naval academy was to "enable the naval officers through further scientific training to make themselves particularly suitable for the higher positions in the navy". The Prussian War Academy , which trained the general staff officers of the Prussian army, served as a model . The curriculum included marine-specific subjects such as B. Naval war history and general education subjects. In addition, every course participant had to attend the lectures for two modern foreign languages. The training lasted three years at the beginning and was shortened to two years in 1883. In this training, 8–9 teaching units (1½ hours in length) were taught compulsory subjects and between 13 and 22 hours per week were offered as electives. In 1904 the faculty consisted of a total of 24 full and part-time lecturers. For the teaching year 1903/04, the Naval Academy, together with the Naval School, had a budget of 183,055 Reichsmarks.

New building on the Kiel Fjord

Auditorium of the Naval Academy (1904)

It was not until 1878 that preparatory work began for a new building on the site of the former bathing establishment in Düsternbrook, which began in 1883. In the three emperor year , on October 8, 1888, the new naval academy and naval school was ceremoniously opened in the auditorium of the new building on the Kiel Fjord. As station chief, Vice Admiral Louis von Blanc took over the construction and handed it over to the director of education, Captain Schering. The Imperial Navy was represented by the Naval Officer Corps and Rear Admiral Paul von Reibnitz . Also present were the heads of the civil authorities as well as the curator, the rector and the professors of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität . In the autumn of 1887 the deck officers' school moved into the building of the naval school on Muhliusstrasse. As an engineering and deck officer school, it moved to Wilhelmshaven in 1901 and to Kiel-Wik in 1913 . The area between Arkona and Herthastraße is still used by the German Navy today.

The naval school and naval academy existed side by side until 1910, but remained under one roof and one director. The Naval Academy was subordinate to the Naval Inspectorate of Education . At that time, the building contained the accommodations for the naval officers, as well as model collections and a library of around 40,000 volumes.

The forms of the Romanesque and Gothic brick architecture and the elements of the early Renaissance in the interior were inspired by the head of the Imperial Admiralty , Lieutenant General von Stosch .

Directors

Teacher

Relocation to the Flensburg Fjord

In 1910 the school was relocated to Flensburg because the naval school in Kiel no longer met the armament needs of the navy. There were also apparently other reasons:

“Today's Schleswig-Holstein state parliament was the original home of the naval officer training and had shaped the imperial junior navy for decades. Kiel, however, developed more and more into a metropolis of the empire permeated by social democracy. The naval leadership - and also the emperor - feared rubbish and ordered the construction of a new naval school in an environment free from such influences. Flensburg offered a free piece of land on the fjord in what is now the almost completely unpopulated Mürwik - the Navy bought another two hectares. "

- Jörg Hillmann

Parliament building

The building in Düsternbrook served as the service building of the Baltic Sea naval station after the First World War . After the Second World War it came into the possession of the state of Schleswig-Holstein . Today it is the Landeshaus Kiel and serves as the parliament building of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag .

literature

  • Rolf Hobson: Maritime Imperialism. Sea power ideology, sea strategic thinking and the Tirpitz Plan 1875 to 1914 (= contributions to military history. Vol. 61). Translated from English by Eva Cutlery. Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56671-7 (At the same time: Trondheim, Universität, Dissertation, 1999: Imperialism at Sea. ), Limited preview in the Google book search.
  • Dieter Matthei, Jörg Duppler, Karl Heinz Kuse (Red.): Marineschule Mürwik. ES Mittler, Herford 1985, ISBN 3-8132-0216-X .
  • Karl Hinrich Peter : aspiring naval officer. Your education from 1848 until today . Mürwik, 1969 (edited in 2009 with some addenda from 1973 by Peter Godzik as download: PDF; 2.6 MB; 182 pages; in pkgodzik.de ).

Web links

Commons : Naval Academy and School  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Imperial Admiralty, acquisitions of land in Kiel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Files in the Federal Archives .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / midosa.startext.de  
  2. ^ Newspaper short messages in Der Volksbote für den Bürger und Landmann (Munich) v. July 15, 1865; Fürther Tagblatt v. May 10, 1866; Aschaffenburger Zeitung v. May 16, 1866 as well as the royal privileged Berlinische Zeitung v. July 17, 1866.
  3. ↑ The picture is thanks to the Defense History Training Center at the Mürwik Naval School
  4. ↑ Heinz Höhne: Canaris. Patriot in the twilight. Bertelsmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-570-02207-2 , p. 21.
  5. ^ A b c Dieter Matthei, Jörg Duppler, Karl Heinz Kuse: Marineschule Mürwik. 1985, p. 63 f.
  6. ^ Karl Hinrich Peter: Candidate Naval Officer. Your education from 1848 until today. 1969 (supplements 1973), here: Internet version 2009, pp. 61–69.
  7. ^ Karl Hinrich Peter: Candidate Naval Officer. Your education from 1848 until today. 1969 (supplements 1973), here: Internet version 2009, pp. 51–61.
  8. ↑ Wilhelm Lexis (Ed.): The universities for special subject areas in the German Reich (= The teaching system in the German Reich. Vol. 4, Part 2). Aschler, Berlin 1904, pp. 238-240.
  9. ^ Rolf Hobson: Maritime Imperialism. Sea power ideology, maritime strategic thinking and the Tirpitz Plan 1875–1914. 2004, p. 145 ff.
  10. ↑ see SMS Elisabeth
  11. ↑ The opening ceremony of the new Naval Academy. In: Latest news. Vol. 7, No. 93, October 9, 1888, ZDB -ID 1161410-9 , p. 4.
  12. ↑ See Andreas Oeding, Broder Schwensen, Michael Sturm: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg! , Flensburg 2009, article: Marineschule Mürwik
  13. ^ Jörg Hillmann: 100 Years of the Mürwik Naval School. Ceremonial address on the occasion of the ceremony on November 24, 2010. Köllen, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-88579-471-4 , p. 6.