The sitter is Friedrich Albrecht, Prince of Prussia (1837–1906), a Prussian field marshal and grandson of Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia. He entered the Prussian army aged ten, participating immediately in the First Schleswig War (1848–1851) and later, like Albert, Prince of Saxony, the Austro Prussian War (1866) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). In 1883 he succeeded his uncle, Prince Friedrich Karl, as Grand Master of the Order of St John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) – Johanniterorden – the German Protestant branch of the Knights Hospitaller, the oldest chivalric order. After the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, removed Ernst August, Crown Prince of Hanover, as Regent of Brunswick in 1885, Prince Albrecht was chosen to replace him.
Pulls of the lid and base of this snuffbox, inscribed with the inventory number 3815, are included in an album labelled N in the Hanau archive. It is interesting to note that the snuffbox was originally conceived to be centred with the crowned cipher of Emperor Wilhelm I, albeit with an incorrect crown. Prince Friedrich Albrecht’s portrait was substituted when the snuffbox was modified for him. It is also interesting that the two snuffboxes recorded in the Hanau archive immediately before and after the present example, inventory numbers 3814 and 3816, were centred with Prince Friedrich Albrecht’s crowned cipher

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