German Navy Crew Chronicle, 1891-1918

This database contains 31 volumes of commemorative publications providing short biographies of officers who graduated from the German Naval Academy in a particular year or class.

Each volume in the database provides details on the officers from a particular class at the German Naval Academy. These are not yearbooks created as the class graduated, however. They are retrospectives or anniversary volumes. For example, the Crew-Chronik for the class of 1891 was printed in 1926, and the book commemorating the class of 1905 was published in 1965.

The biographies vary in length, as did the careers and lives of the men they chronicle. But some are extensive, and they can be full of valuable genealogical information, including

• birth date and place
• spouse
• marriage date and place
• children’s names and birth dates
• divorce
• death date and place
• parents’ names
• dates and details of the officer’s military posts, promotions, and career

Volumes may also include pictures and address lists.

A few years during the period 1891–1918 were not part of the library collection in Germany and so are missing from this collection. The missing years are 1892–1894, 1896–1897, 1900, 1903–1904, and 1916. Also, some years had more than one class (or “band”) go through the academy. The years 1901, 1905–1908, 1911, and 1917 each had two bands. There were three bands in 1915 and four in 1914.