Original German Pre-WWI Saxony Infantry Officer’s Visor Cap Original Items

Original Item: Only One Available. This is an Imperial German, Great War, Saxony Officer’s Visor Cap (schirmmütze), It is constructed of dark blue wool with red wood band and red piping along with metal cockades and interior lining and leather sweatband. The only marking on the interior is VIII written in pencil.

The cap is in phenomenal shape for its age and bears the state cockade for Saxony and the national German cockade above that. The dark blue cap with red band and piping indicates infantry. The sweatband is cracking a bit but is still intact, only separating from its stitching in a few places. Overall a great cap. This is a phenomenally preserved piece of Dunkelblau headgear, ready for further research and display. The size is approximately 7⅛.

During the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, Saxony sided with Austria, and the Royal Saxon Army was generally seen as the only ally to bring substantial aid to the Austrian cause, having abandoned the defence of Saxony itself to join up with the Austrian army in Bohemia. This effectiveness probably allowed Saxony to escape the fate of other north German states allied with Austria – notably the Kingdom of Hanover – which were annexed by Prussia after the war. The Austrians and French insisted as a point of honour that Saxony must be spared, and the Prussians acquiesced. Saxony nevertheless joined the Prussian-led North German Confederation the next year. With Prussia’s victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the members of the confederation were organised by Otto von Bismarck into the German Empire, with Wilhelm I as its emperor. John, as Saxony’s incumbent king, had to accept the Emperor as primus inter pares, although he, like the other German princes, retained some of the prerogatives of a sovereign ruler, including the ability to enter into diplomatic relations with other states.

Wilhelm I’s grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918 as a result of a revolution set off in the days before Germany’s defeat in World War I. King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony followed him into abdication when workers’ and soldiers’ councils were set up in the cities of Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig. Within the newly formed Weimar Republic, on 1 November 1920, the Kingdom of Saxony was reorganized into the Free State of Saxony.