German Awards: Order of Receiving

[Rictavian]

Is there a progression in which the awards/medals were earned? About all I can remember is that the Pour le Merite was at the top, er I think. If the subject is too involved is there a website or a good book I can be referred to?

[GMU]

Yes, there was an order, or precedence, as you may say.

In the order bar (ordensschnalle), for example, a Prussian would have the Iron Cross 2nd Class placed first from left to right. This was to be followed by other Prussian awards, like the House Order of Hohenzollern and others. Then, the orders from the different states followed in order of importance.

However, this could be different for a Saxon or a Bavarian. For example, a Saxon, could consider his native land orders more important than those of Prussia, so he would usually place his Saxon awards first against convention, as Max Immelmann did.

A wonderful source of information in English is the series of books written by the late Neal W O’Connor on the aviation awards from Imperial Germany.

For a great discussion on Imperial Awards, you could go to The Gentleman’s Military Interest Club (GMIC), a forum with very knowledgeable people that can provide you with a lot of information on this topic too.

[Reinout]

Yes there was!

Normally, a deserving individual would start out with an EKII, followed by an EKI. If the chap were an officer he would go on to a Knight´s Cross of the Hohenzollern House Order before winning the PlM. Non-officers were ineligible for the last two orders, but could earn themselves the Golden Military Merit Cross. About 12 non-officers were fortunate enough to earn an enlisted man´s version of the Hohenzollern House Order, called the "Inhaber" or "member´s" version, which was very rare.

Exceptions are:
-certain actions immediately merited a higher award (did not apply for airmen), skipping the Iron Crosses
-once you´ve won the GMMC and get promoted to officier rank, you did not also get the Knight´s Cross of the Hohenzollern House Order, but were usually immediately proposed for the PlM

Kind regards,

Reinout

[jaba-the-hunt]

The imperial german award regulation are a little bit complicated and are diferent from each state. The saxons have different regulation as the bavarian or prussian. There are a lot of pilots or observer who erned a lot of different awards but never had the PLM.

Regards Alex