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Uniformierung & Ausrüstung

From the Colorful to the Field-Gray Coat

Prussia dominated the Imperial Army not only in organizational and weapons-technical matters but also in clothing. After the founding of the Empire in 1871 and the incorporation or accession of the non‑Prussian military contingents, a process of harmonization began that also manifested itself visually — in the uniforms1. In the Imperial Constitution of 1871 Article 63 stated: “With regard to clothing, the basic colors and the cut of the Royal Prussian Army shall be authoritative. It is left to the commander of the respective contingent to determine the external badges (cockades etc.).”

Heeressoziologie

The Internal Structures of the Imperial Army

The Imperial Army was a social formation and therefore exhibited informal as well as formal structures. With regard to the valuation of the different branches of service, there was a clear hierarchy in prestige. Cavalry occupied first place, followed by infantry, the technical troops and, last of all, the train. The social standing of the individual branches did not follow objective criteria and ignored the new dimensions of technology. The result was the complete overvaluation of the lance-armed cavalry—which, against the background of modern machine weapons, already appeared anachronistic.

Heeressoziologie

The Position of the Military in the Society of the German Empire

The military held an outstanding social position in the Empire, and its affairs largely escaped political control. The German Emperor was the supreme commander of the German army, and Wilhelm II (1859–1941) had internalized this role to a particular degree. The socially critical writer Theodor Fontane once (1897) made the following perceptive remark about this monarch: "He has a million soldiers and also wants a hundred armored ships — he dreams (and I shall credit him highly for this dream) of a humiliation of England. Germany shall be on top, in everything and everywhere. All of this — whether it is wise and feasible, I leave undecided — touches me sympathetically and I would willingly follow him on his tightrope, if I saw that he ... had the right balancing pole in his hands. But he does not have that. He wants, if not the impossible, then at least the extremely dangerous, with the wrong equipment, with insufficient means. He believes he can achieve the new with the very old, he wants to erect the modern with junkroom weapons. He provides new must, and because he no longer treads the old hoses, he simply wraps these old hoses with ever-thicker twine and thinks: now it will hold. But it will not hold ... What the Emperor presumably intends cannot be achieved with “weapons” at all; all military efforts seem to me as if in the year 1400 all force had been directed to make knightly armor bulletproof — instead one finally arrived at the only correct solution, to discard the armor entirely"1.