prussia

Looks like another of Crown Prince Wilhelm. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William,_German_Crown_Prince "His Imperial and Royal Highness Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst Hohenzollern, the Crown Prince of Prussia was best known to most people outside Germany as Little Willie, a slender youth with a long nose and no chin. He was seen in most of his photographs dressed as a Death's Head Hussar, and caricaturists generally drew him in that uniform, which suited his long and lanky fignre. At eighteen he "came of age" and assumed the Royal and Imperial dignities and precedence, and in the same year (1900) was made a Lieutenant in the 1st Foot Guards, served three years in that rank, became a Cavalry Captain for four years, and a Major for six. His name appeared on the lists of eleven or twelve different German regiments, and he also belonged to the llth Spanish Dragoons. Up to the outbreak of the Great War he could be described as a keen regimental soldier up to a certain point. He was advanced to the command of the Death's Head Hussars at Danzig. Without any real knowledge of war he was quickly jumped up in rank from commander of a cavalry regiment to lieutenantgeneral, and given command of the largest group of army-corps." www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/totenkopf.htm

"Alfred Kühlewindt, who took this photograph, was allowed to enter the battlefield as a war photographer in the fall of 1914. Many photographs of the German front line were staged. The new manner of waging war with long-range artillery, not to mention the no-man’s-land between opposing trench lines, made photographing battle scenes very difficult. As a result, photographs of still scenes (where exposure times were not an issue) circulated in far higher numbers than shots of active combat. " germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2125

artolog: Thanks for providing us with more information about the photographer. We'll include a bit of it next time we update.

I found this postcard with a color version of the same scene, (I suppose handcolored afterwards) but the cutting out is not the same. The postcard is bigger, on all sides but especially on the left side. Does this mean that your glass negative is not the original? Can you explain this.

The Bain negative is from a copy of a postcard version of the photo, which is cropped differently than the postcard you found.

LOC, you have spelled Kühlewindt's name wrong in the descriptive notes.

the youngest Prince also renounced all claim to the throne so he could marry below his station, which the former Kaiser forbade.

Copied by the Bain Agency from a German souvenir postcard. This appears to be a composite portrait of the three, each of whom was photographed separately. That would account for the shadow being on the right half of the Kaiser's face, while on the left half of his son's. And the kid is out of proportion to both of his elders.