Paymaster

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Under paymaster is generally understood as a person who professionally carries out payments and managed funds. In the military, the paymaster also held the rank of officer . In Austria, this administrative task in the army was performed by a so-called troop accounting officer. Both profession and military rank no longer exist today and the word is only occasionally used as a metaphor , especially by journalists in newspaper articles .

In civil shipping, too, the purser is usually no longer part of the crew. Passenger ships are an exception . However, the English word purser is gradually displacing the German term.

history

In the imperial navy, the naval staff paymaster had the rank of lieutenant captain , the naval chief paymaster that of a first lieutenant at sea and the purser candidate was one of the deck officers . Named examples of naval paymasters and purser aspirants were made known by Emperor Wilhelm II's visit to Palestine from October 11 to November 26, 1898. The naval paymasters Heppner ( Hohenzollern ) and Vorpahl ( Hertha ) as well as the purse aspirants Linse ( Hela ) and Smidt ( Loreley ) belonged to the staff of the yacht Hohenzollern and the ships Hertha , Hela and Loreley .

In the Weimar Republic , the upper accounting and administrative officials of the German Reichsheeres and the Reichsmarine with officer rank were designated as paymasters. The paymaster wore two gold stars on each of the shoulder pieces of his officer's uniform.

In the Wehrmacht paymasters were military officials of the higher service until the end of the Second World War and were considered to be the commander's assistants in matters relating to administration. These paymasters, who had the rank of officer, took care of the business and matters of the army administration at the lower level. The accounting officers were subordinate to them . There were the ranks:

• Paymaster for infantry - battalions or artillery departments
• Chief paymaster in pioneer battalions, communications, driving and motor vehicle departments
• Corps major in the regiment rods
• Chief Paymaster .

The paymaster with the rank of lieutenant wore artfully designed and interconnected capital letters on his officer's shoulder pieces: an "H" and a "V" as an abbreviation for Army Administration. The same shoulder piece as the paymaster, but an additional star adorned the shoulder pieces of the senior paymaster. Paymasters wore two stars. Chief staff paymaster only had the connected capital letters "HV" on their pair of shoulder pieces, which were provided with loops. A star was added to the field paymaster.

The paymaster in the navy of the former German Wehrmacht was called naval paymaster and from 1935 onwards no longer had the status of an official . The names were:

• Lieutenant (V)
• Captain lieutenant (V)
• Corvette captain (V) etc. according to the rank of the naval paymaster concerned. His tasks included taking care of the money management and catering.

Administrative officers in the Navy carried a cadastral staff on their shoulder pieces , a staff with two wings, which is entwined by two serpents with heads facing each other, and the corresponding number of stars, depending on the rank.

Ship paymaster

The paymaster's office on board the RMS Lusitania (c. 1907).

On board passenger ships, the paymaster is also called the provision master . His work covers a wide range of commercial and financial areas. Among other things, he is responsible for paying wages , buying provisions , paying port fees, keeping passenger and crew lists , customs clearance and passport matters for the crew and passengers. In addition, a ship paymaster acts as an administrator of the ship's treasury and often also as the manager of the service and kitchen staff. Professionally, the activities are comparable to those of a hotel manager. The ship's paymaster had his own office, the paymaster's office, e.g. B. on ocean-going motor ships.

Shooting club

In shooting clubs, the treasurer is often referred to as the paymaster or the second treasurer as the underpayment master.

Web links

Wiktionary: Paymaster  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Brockhaus. Handbook of knowledge in four volumes. Vol. 4, keyword “Paymaster”, p. 678, column 2, Leipzig 1924.
2. ↑ Examples: Use of the word “paymaster” .
3. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon. Sixth edition, vol. 20, keyword "Paymaster", p. 835, column 2, Leipzig a. Vienna 1909.
4. ↑ The German imperial couple in the Holy Land in autumn 1898 . Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, Berlin 1899, p. 413 (list of participants in the Palestine trip).
5. ↑ Illustration of the uniforms of the Reichsheeres and the Reichsmarine under No. 21 in: Brockhaus. Handbook of knowledge in four volumes. Vol. 4, plate between pp. 456 and 456 457, Leipzig 1929, new edition with addendum 1933.
6. ↑ The pocket dictionary. Vol. 19, p. 19, column 1, keyword “Paymaster”, Gütersloh 1992, ISBN 3-570-04219-7 .
7. ↑ Der Neue Brockhaus, fourth volume, SZ, Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1942, keyword: Paymaster
8. ↑ Great Book of Knowledge. Second volume, keyword “Paymaster”, p. 1626, column 1, Leipzig 1938.
9. ↑ Colored illustration of the intertwined initials "HV" on a shoulder piece for officers of the army administration in: "Die Deutsche Wehrmacht", publisher: "Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Dresden-A 5", 1936, under: "Flags and Uniforms of the Wehrmacht"
10. ^ Meyer's Lexicon. Eighth edition. Seventh volume, p. 1026, column 2, keyword “Naval Paymaster”, Leipzig 1939.
11. ↑ Keyword “Paymaster's office” and illustration in: Duden. Vol. 3 "Picture Dictionary of the German Language". Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich, 1992, p. 108 and plate p. 233 Motor ship, image no. 45, ISBN 3-411-04034-3 .