Middling Marine Minion's 1920 XXV

[Guest Rick Research]

Perhaps no award documents suffered so greatly by the defeat of Imperial Germany as those handed out after the war for long service.

Here is a typical "dog license" given to Marine-Oberintendantursekret?r Otto Sievert on 3 June 1920 per authorization of 22 March--

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but this was no boot out the door retirement "present" to a Beamter only made eligible for the "DAK" by regulations changes in 1914 that were immediately suspended for the duration.

[Guest Rick Research]

This type and level of official was not shown in the annual Rank Lists. Even the navy Honor Rank List relegates Beamten to a section in back showing their first names, birth year, and highest Imperial promotion date.

Otto Sievert was born in 1873 and joined the Imperial Navy in 1892.

He was apppointed a

Marine-Intendantursekret?r 23 July 1900 and promoted to

Marine-Oberintendantursekret?r 4 August 1910

and other than being alive, that is all the MERL offers up.

Luckily, this branch of pay and supply corps officials put out their very own "Kriegsrangliste" in 1929, and here is his entry from that:

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From this we see that he had served in the Feldintendantur of Marinekorps Flandern, where he picked up an EK2 and an OK2 on combatant ribons-- and there is his XXV. His 1897 remained invisible.

And since this shows us he did NOT retire in 1920, but was still on active duty in 1929, back checking in the too tender to scan paperbound Winter 1923/24 Reichswehr Einteiling and November 1924 navy rank List shows that he was a

marine-Oberintendanturinspekteur in the payroll office of the North Sea Station, Wilhelmshaven 1923-24.

[Guest Rick Research]

Other than his brief book-keeping interlude in Belgium, it was decade after decade slogging through pay stubs at Wilhelmshaven for him.

In 1936-- this from that year's Kriegsmarine Rangliste--

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he had at long, LONG last risen to the level of the Visible--

still at the same old job, only now

Marine-Intendanturamtmann = Korvettenkapit?n/Major.

This year he would have swapped off his old XXV for the new Wehrmacht's newly created awards, and padded out his medal bar with the 25 and 12.

Sievert was still on the job in 1937. If he had not retired-- and these sorts of officials tended to drop in the harness--

in 1939 he would have received the oakleaves created that year to recognize 40 years of military service--

in his 47th year of duty.

He was exactly the sort of long serving, low ranking, administrative functionary who received the Wehrmacht 40 Years Service decoration.