watercooledmachinegun

That would appear to be a Vickers machine-gun (British) in the background, and the helmet looks Britsh too.

I believe that is a Browning Machine gun. The helmet is a British design (Brodie helmet) that was adopted by US forces in 1917 during World War One. The US designated it the M1917 helmet.

The good reliable M1 .30 cal. Garand rifle. It was the replacement for the bolt-action Springfield 1903 model. Both, sturdy rifles were good for close combat and fixed-bayonet fighting.

Yes, tomfs, on closer inspection it doesn't have the fluted barrel sleeve and that stubby muzzle-brake like the vickers. I didn't know about the M1917, so that is a new one. I think the British design was loosly based on a medieval foot soldier's helmet.

wonderful works

"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.

Getty Images has this caption:
"Profile view of soldiers as they guard an entrance to the Reichstag, the seat of the Weimar Republic's National Assembly, during the abortive Kapp Putsch, Berlin, Germany, mid March 1920. The putsch was an attempt to overthrow the monarchy.
March 14, 1920"
www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/profile-view-of-sol...
see also

Thanks for the additional context!