Figure 1.-- This color postcard shows Kaiser Wilhelm II, his wife Augusta, and five of their seven children. We assumed that the child wearing a pink and white dress was the Princess Viktoria Luise (1892-1980), who seems to be about 4 years old, which would date the picture about 1896. The two oldest boys are missing from the group--Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951) and Prince Eitel Friedrich (1883-1942), who would have been about 14 and 13 respectively. The other four boys in the order of their ages are Prince Adalbert (1884-1948), Prince August Wilhelm (1887-1949), Prince Oscar (1888-1950), and Prince Joachim (1890-1920). All the boys wear white sailor suits with long black stockings. It is possible that the portrait was based on an ear;ier portrait and the two youngest chilren are not included and it is Prince Oskar wearing the dress. A card like this would have been approved by the royal familt before printing. Notice the monument in the background who I am guessing is Frederick the Great.

We are unsure to what extent the boys wore sailor suits. The Kaiser himself commonly wore sailor suits as a boy, but he had an English mother. We are unsure just how commonly he and his wife dressed the boys in sailor suits, in part because of the relatively few family images we have acquired. (Images of Kaiser Wilhelm's grandchildren are much more common than his children.) Sailor suits do seem to have been worn by the boys when younger up to about age 14. Once they enterted cadet training they no longer wore sailor suits. While some images show the boys wearing sailor suits, we see them wearing many other outfits as well. We note that in an 1896 portrait where Prince Joachom wrears a Fauntleroy suit, that the next youngest princes (Oskar and Augustus) are wearing very plain kneepants sailor suits. We have found only the one image where with all the children wearing sailor suits. There are fortraits in which all the boys wear sailor and portraits with only the younger boys wearing sailor uits. Here only the younger boys wear sailor suits (figure 1). Note Princess Victoria does nt wear a sailor suit, but a frilly dress. What we do not understand is just how commonly they wore sailor suits. The portraits we have are formal portraits. we are less sure what the boys wore for everyday outfits.

Created: 11:05 PM 7/14/2006
Last updated: 4:07 AM 12/6/2008