German Imperial Naval Academy

The German Imperial Naval Academy (Marineakademie) at Kiel, Germany, was from 1872 until the end of the First World War the higher education institution of the German Imperial Navy, Kaiserliche Marine, where naval officers were prepared for problems in higher levels of command.

The Naval Academy was founded in 1872 by the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, Lieutenant General Albrecht von Stosch, as a graduate school to prepare naval officers selected for higher duties in the Imperial Navy. He took as a model the Prussian Military Academy, which trained general staff officers for the Prussian army. The curriculum consisted of navy subjects such as naval history and general education courses. In addition, course participants learned two modern foreign languages. Initially the training lasted for three years; beginning in 1883 it was shortened to two years.

The Naval Academy was the training command of the Imperial Navy. From 1888 the Naval Academy was in the same building as the undergraduate level Naval School (Marineschule) until 1910, when the Naval School moved to Flensburg-Mürwik, where it remains today. The building contained accommodations for the students, also model collections and a library of about 40,000 volumes.

After the First World War the academy was closed, and the building housed a Baltic Sea naval station. After the Second World War it came into the possession of the state of Schleswig-Holstein. It is now the government house of Kiel, and serves as a parliament building of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

The Navy of the Federal Republic of Germany uses the Marineschule at Flensburg-Mürwik as its Naval Academy.