Private of the 3rd East Asian Infantry Regiment

 
     
 

 
 

Photo © Karsten Herzogenrath

This is a posed studio photograph taken in China. It shows a private ("Musketier") of the 3rd East Asian Infantry Regt ("3. Ostasiatische Infanterie Regiment").

He wears the East Asian 1900 Khaki Uniform, consisting of a khaki tunic with a stand and fall collar, concealed buttons to fasten the front and two breast and two hip pockets, all with concealed fastenings. His shoulder straps are khaki with white piping and a red stylised regimental number 3 can be seen. He wears two medals on his left breast, the China Campaign Medal with its striped ribbon for service during the Boxer Rebellion 1900-01 and the Prussian Wilhelm I Centenary Medal, awarded to all members of the Prussian army in 1897. It hangs on a yellow ribbon which appears darker in this photograph due to the orthochromatic film used at the time.

He wears the Khaki field cap first introduced in the late Summer of 1900 to replace the straw hat, and worn with only the imperial cockade, as seen here, from February 1901. The Khaki Summer uniform was replaced by a field grey one in 1904, which dates this photograph as sometime between 1901 and 1904.


Detail of the same Photograph

Please respect the generosity of Karsten Herzogenrath in sharing this photograph with us by not reproducing it without prior permission. 

 
     
 
Please contact me here if you have other photographs of the German colonies or the soldiers and sailors that served there. I am especially keen to hear from people with family photograph collections and am always happy to try to assist in identifying uniforms, units, places and dates for family history research.

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