Germany, Imperial. A Naval Serviceman’s Album from a 1912 Mediterranean Voyage

(Kaiserliche Marine Fotoalbum). A fascinating album compiled by an Imperial German Navy serviceman, constructed of a heavy card stock binding with an olive-drab canvas exterior liner, the interior content consisting of 26 black card stock pages, in turn pasted with 239 private photographs and postcards, added chronologically and depicting the owner with other naval serviceman in Kurmark in 1912 prior to departing for a lengthy sea voyage, with subsequent private photographs interspersed with an extensive array of postcards documents visits to Finland, England (with scenes of the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth), Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Beirut (then the Ottoman Empire, now Lebanon), Jaffa (then the Ottoman Empire, now Israel), and Egypt, the former with strops in Alexandria, Giza, and Cairo (with superb privately-captured depictions of the Sphinx and other historical sites), with additional transit through the Suez Canal, most accompanied by handwritten captions and inscriptions describing the image, the album measuring 42 cm (w) x 31 cm (h) and demonstrating minor material fatigue, a fascinating account of an excursion through the Mediterranean on the eve of the First World War in extremely fine condition.