Figure 1.--Here we see a large roup of German boys at some sort of party or festival in 1927. Quite a few boys wear sailor suits which I think means they dressed up for the event. We see a lot of costunes, especially Indian costumes. This mostly meand warbonnets, but some boys are more elaboratekly dressed. Two boys are dressed as chefs, but there are no Indians. Put your cursor on the image to see more of the group.

German boys seem especially interested in cowboys and indianns and Westerm lore in general. I'm not sure when this began. I'm not sure about the 19th century. We see boys playing cownoys and Indianns in the early 20th centuty, both before and after World War I. At first it was through books. Buffalo Bill's Wild west show was a bit hit in Germany as it was in other European countries at the turn of the 20th century. Hollywood silent films added to the interest. Hollywood cowboy films were popula in Germany, at least before the NAZIs. (Films in the 1920s were much more internatonal because silent films could be easily distributed in any country, all you had to do was to chznge the text segments.) This may have changed somewhat in the 1930s with the talkies and soon after sound appeared (1929), the NAZIs seized power (1933). Here we are not sure about NAZI policies affected the attitude of German boys during the 1930s. We suspect there were fewer American films and this ment fewer cowboy films. There was a great deal of propaganda vilfying Jews and Blacks. The NaZIs classified Native Americans as an inferior people. They do not, however, seem to have been targeted to any extent in NAZI propaganda. We know that the interest of German boys in the lore of the West continued in NAZI Germany, even after the outbreak of World war II. British Enigma Machine code breakers found operator who used "Tom Mix" (a movie cowboy) as a key code. A German reader who was in the Hitler Youth remebers playing Indian and even had a war bonnet--a better one than most American boys. We note German boys dressing up in Indian gear into the 1960s.

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Created: 3:56 AM 10/1/2009
Last updated: 3:56 AM 10/1/2009