Soon after the conclusion of peace directions were given that the examinations should recommence, with an equitable consideration of the claims of the Landwehr officers, ensigns, and other young persons who had grown up during the war.
At first there was only one board of examination at Berlin, with large discretionary powers as to their mode of procedure. In April, 1816, a cabinet order was issued to form boards of examination for the Swordknot at every brigade, as the present divisions were then called, besides the existing board at Berlin, for the examination for an officer’s commission.
Contemporaneously with the nine boards of examination, the board of military studies, by an order of January, 1816, directed the establishment of schools for every brigade, and attempted to gradually regulate the instruction they gave. The schools contained two classes, the lower to prepare candidates for the Swordknot, the higher to prepare candidates for the rank of officer. As, however, no standard of attainment was required for admission into the schools, their instruction had to commence with the first elements, and was charged with more work than it could perform. The weaker scholars stayed two, three, or more years in the lower class, and the education of the better scholars was impeded.
During this and the following period the authority over the examination boards (the Præsidium,) was distinct from that over the schools, (the general inspection,) and it was not till later that both authorities were vested in a single person. This division of powers, intended to secure the independence and impartiality of the examinations, led to the result that the two authorities were occasionally led, from a difference of principles, to labor in different directions. Still, in the infancy of military education, the rivalry it occasioned, was favorable to a rapidity of development.
An order of the 16th of March, 1827, added French to the studies for the ensigns’ examination, and fixed a higher standard of attainments in military sciences for the officers’ examination.
Nearly at the same time, a cabinet order of the 27th of March, 1827, directed that there should be only one class for Swordknot ensigns in the division schools, and that after October, 1829, the candidate should obtain a testimonial of fitness for the rank of Swordknot ensign previous to admission as a student.
Accordingly young men had to be prepared for examination for the Swordknot at their entrance into their corps, or might prepare themselves by private studies and instruction during their service.
The task of the schools, still very comprehensive embracing all the liberal sciences as well as the military, was accomplished during this period in two courses of nine months, in a higher and a lower class.
A cabinet order of the 31st of January, 1837, introduced the entrance examination, instead of the examination for the Swordknot, being declared that every candidate for the commission of an officer, after his reception into a corps, should prove in an examination his possession of the knowledge requisite for a Swordknot ensigncy before his actual appointment. At the same time a regulation of the ministry of war, of the 17th of December 1836, remodeled and more precisely defined both the entrance (Swordknot ensign) examination, and that for the commission of an officer. This regulation, while it essentially modified the instruction given at the division schools, furnished them at the same time with a more certain clue for their guidance. The preparation of youths for the Swordknot examination during their service in the corps was discontinued. But the standard of the entrance examination was still too low, requiring only a small portion of the branches of a general liberal education, and that not in the shape in which they are taught in our gymnasia. Hence the evil result, that young men, previous to their entrance into a corps, had usually to prepare for the military profession at private institutions instead of at the gymnasia, and nevertheless brought with them a very defective amount of preparatory training; on the other hand, the demands of the officers’ examination were very multifarious. It still required the general scholastic sciences by way of formal education, and the military sciences as a special education for the military profession. Thus the task of the division schools continued overwhelming, and an aim was set before them which they could not attain.
A regulation of the 4th of February, 1844, reformed simultaneously the whole system of military examination and education.