Austro-Hungarian Sergeant

In an attempt to learn more about the uniformed man in the photos on my previous post, I e-mailed a few different people online who had posted information about military uniforms and sent them copies of the two photos with men in uniform. I am still waiting to hear back from a couple of the people, but one wrote me back today. Here is what he wrote:

“Those are some very nice photographs. I think that the soldiers in the pictures are Pre-WWI Austro-Hungarians by looking at the scalloped pockets on their tunics and the military hat on the one in the group photograph. The rank of the soldier in the first photograph I think is Sergeant because, if I remember correctly, Sergeants had 3 stars on their collars (at least they did in WWI).”

When I got this e-mail, I took a closer look at the photographs and noticed something I hadn’t seen before – the soldier in the individual photograph has no pockets on the front of his uniform, but the soldier wearing the hat in the group shot does have pockets – could these be two different soldiers, or the same man wearing different parts of his uniform in the two different photos? Also, I noticed that the man in the individual photo has three stars on the left side of his collar and three more stars on the right side of his collar (which can be difficult to see in the copy of the photo). I wonder if this means that his rank may be something other than Sergeant? But I can see that the stars on the left side of the collar each have 6 points and the stars on the right side each have 5 points, so maybe three of the stars refer to his military rank, and the other three mean something else? Well, now I need to do a little research on the Austro-Hungarian army.