Ok, so we take Professor Cook's advice and send him to Architecture School - then what?
If he becomes an architect or perhaps more likely, a draughtsman equivalent he would be more prosperous at war time and may well stay in the A-H and join their forces. He might even be elevated to a higher rank, on the basis that he is either a professional or a man of some substance. In which case he has a very different war.
If he spends the war with Austria that surely would make it harder for him to go to Germany after the war and set up shop, given he has fought in the service of a different, if related and close empire.
He may even end up in a Russian camp, or if he serves against the Italians, with a deep hatred of such.