So, in Navies, and militaries in general, customs and traditions are very important. In the US Navy for example, it’s customary when boarding to salute the ensign at the rear of the ship, then request permission to board. When the President, a fleet commander, or a ship’s commanding officer come aboard it’s announced in the appropriate terminology; United States when the president boards, or the ship’s name when the commanding officer boards. I’ve looked into, but been unable to find much information regarding such customs in the Imperial German Navy. Any of you have any random trivia in this area?
Everything that talks about the Imperial German Navy seems utterly uninterested in customs or traditions, at least as far as I can find. You might be forced to write around it.
Well, even with my superior German skills it's hard to nigh impossible to find details on this on the internet. I suppose one had to read a real book about military history for that. :/ However, I was able to unearth a few things that might at least give you a hint about how life in the Kaiserliche Marine was. (You need to use an online translating tool for all the following pages, unless you speak German.) The first is an essay by a student of the University of the Bundeswehr about inhowfar the Kaiserliche Marine can provide traditions for the modern Bundeswehr. (It might look at the topic from a rather conservative, uncritical point of view.) Unfortuntately the whole essay costs money. https://www.grin.com/document/387484 The second is a newspaper article from 1958 that talks about a lecture given by some military consultant for the party SPD. In that lecture the speaker talked about two seamen who had been sentenced to execution by firing squad in 1917 for ... causing an uprising or such. He defended their actions which caused a scandal. Then the article goes on to explain how badly seamen were treated in the Kaiserliche Marine which made them sypathetic to the revolution in 1917/18. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-42620967.html Here is a little bit about uniforms: https://www.parow-info.de/Parow%201956/DG/Brauchtum.html I wish I could help more, but there is so little! Buuuuuuut... Maybe if you write an E-Mail to the Deutscher Marinebund, they might be able to help you. It's an association of navy people, both civil and military. There is one contact address for navy history (Marinehistorie), that I would recommend using here. One Dr. Witt: dr.witt@deutscher-marinebund.de Good luck!
