Officer Soldbuch question

[diegrinder]

When an NCO or soldier would be promoted to officer was it be common, rare or routine to have them turn in their old soldbuch and be issued a new soldbuch with their new officer rank? For example an NCO goes to Officer school and is promoted; would he get a new soldbuch? Or just maintain his old one and add the new rank.

I am assuming since his org. soldbuch would have a picture of him as private he would potentially have a new one issued with his picture as an officer.

[Ian Jewison]

Normally they would not receive a new Soldbuch, however that depended on how full the old Soldbuch was!
Normally his new rank would be filled in and it is not uncommon to see a Soldbuch with the following sequence of ranks (depdendant on arm etc.!)

Sch******252;tzen
Gefreiter
Unteroffizier
F******228;hnrich
Oberf******228;hnrich
Leutnant

The junior ranks could well be preceede with Fahnenjunker.

However after the above ranks the Soldbuch could well be quite full so from Oberleutant he could well be issued with a new Soldbuch.....

Soldbuch photos were not introduced unitl late summer/autumn 1943 at the earliest so you would expect a photo to be at the current rank when the photo was inserted onto the front cover....again don't take that as gospel as he might just us a photo that is available at the time rather than a current one!

Hope that helps a bit?

/Ian

[Angel Farré]

Not change, just notated the promotion and sometimes they used every free space to notate a new rank even add extra pages, look at the Soldbuch to RK holder Horst Haase.

Angel

[Angel Farré]

Final form with the extra page with final rank notated.

Angel

[diegrinder]

Helps a great deal. Thanks for the information.