He spent his youth with his siblings at the New Palace, also in Potsdam, and his school days with his brothers at the Prinzenhaus in Plön in his mother's ancestral Schleswig-Holstein.

Prince August Wilhelm married his cousin Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg on 22 October 1908 at the Berliner Stadtschloss.

The couple had planned to take up residence in Schönhausen Palace in Berlin, but changed their mind when his father, Kaiser Wilhelm, decided to leave his son the Villa Liegnitz in the Sanssouci Park.

His personal adjutant Hans Georg von Mackensen played an important role in his life; the two had been close friends since August Wilhelm's youth.

Initially, many Allied and German leaders favored transitioning Germany to a constitutional monarchy with August Wilhelm as either Emperor or regent for one of Crown Prince Wilhelm's children, although this possibility was quickly precluded when Philipp Scheidemann was forced by the pressures of the German Revolution to declare a republic.

August Wilhelm joined the conservative nationalist veterans group Der Stahlhelm (English: "The Steel helmet").

His involvement with the NSDAP and his adoration of Adolf Hitler made August Wilhelm often the subject of mockery by the left-wing press (who gave him the nickname Braunhemdchen Auwi, or "Auwi the Little Brown Shirt"), politicians (French Ambassador André François-Poncet called him Hanswurst "Hans the Brown Sausage") and from the National Socialists themselves (Joseph Goebbels referred to him as a "good-natured but slightly gormless boy").

[3] However, after the passing of the Enabling Act of 1933 and the establishment of the dictatorship of the Third Reich, the party no longer needed the former prince, who had secretly hoped "that Hitler would one day hoist him or his son Alexander up to the vacant throne of the Kaiser".

A court in Potsdam, in the Soviet occupation zone, issued an arrest warrant against him, but soon after that he became seriously ill and died at a hospital in Stuttgart at the age of 62.