The final examination having been completed in June, the student goes through the three weeks of staff duty we have described, and finishes his last three summer months in that branch of the army in which he has not yet served. He then returns to his regiment, where he receives the certificate of his three years’ work. But no list is published of the order of merit in which the officers stand. If the certificate is satisfactory, he forwards it to the Chief of the Prussian Staff, with a request to be employed in the Topographical Department of the Staff. If this is granted, he receives an order to join it in about two years, i.e. about nine or ten years after first entering the service.
About eight officers are yearly sent to the Topographical Department, and serve there for two or three years, surveying and drawing in summer, working at military science in the winter. The correction of the Topographical Map of Prussia is in their hands. Finally, two out of these are selected for the Staff; the remainder return to their regiments, to become adjutants or to teach in the Division Schools.
The most immediate advantage of being in the staff corps is promotion to a captaincy at any age, which, considering the extreme slowness of promotion in Prussia, may be termed an early one. This is generally gained within two or three years after joining the corps, i.e. at thirty-three or thirty-four. In other corps hardly any one has a chance of becoming captain till after forty.
We may add, that the number of officers in the Topographical Department is about forty, on the staff itself sixty-four. No one belonging to the staff is below the rank of captain, or above that of colonel. Every general of division has one officer of the staff attached to him, and two adjutants, the first nominated by the chief of the staff, the two last by the king, and these two belong rather to the officer than to the general. They are not removable with him. The adjutants are not officers of the staff, though they are often chosen from amongst those who have been at the Staff School. They are nominated by the king upon reports sent into him by the generals of division, and the appointment is not considered a great prize, as it implies neither extra pay, promotion, nor permanency; the adjutants are promoted in the usual course, and then, upon promotion, return to their regiments. The adjutants of battalions and regiments are appointed, like our own, by the officers commanding. The name of aide-de-camp does not exist in the Prussian service, but that of adjutant is used in its place.
[VII. ELEMENTARY MILITARY SCHOOLS FOR NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.]
[1. MILITARY ORPHAN-HOUSES.]
There are three Military Orphan-Houses in Prussia for the children of soldiers, two for boys, one at Potsdam, and the other at Annaburg, and one for girls at Pretzch. Although intended for orphans, they receive children whose parents are too poor to provide for them. They receive a good elementary education and are brought up for trades, and can make their selection between a civil and a military career. The English Commissioners report that they found 800 pupils in the Orphan-House at Potsdam, of whom 200 were under the charge of female teachers; 520 were in the senior department, including thirty-six in the music class, who will go into the Regimental Bands, and about twenty who formed a separate military class, who would probably enter the Artillery School.
The School at Annaburg, and the subsidiary Girls’ School at Pretzsch, are both Protestant in character; no religious teaching is supplied for Roman Catholics. Roman Catholic boys are all sent to Potsdam, and Roman Catholic girls are provided for in ordinary schools, and in private families, and payment made on their behalf out of the funds of the institution.
Dr. Bache in his “Report on Education in Europe,” gives the following account of these institutions.