German Family Trends (1860s)


Figure 1.--Here we see a young German mother were her four children. The two boys wear mathing tunics with long pants. Both boys have their hair down to their ears. Note the great hobby horse. Another child who looks to be a girl has her dress styled like her brothers tunics. She is holding some sort of pot.

The 1860s is the first decade for which we have large numbers of German portraits. Photography was invented by the French in 1839, but we see relatively few German photographys using the early processes like Daguerreotypes and Ambritypes, far fewer than in America duruing the 1840s and 50s. With the appearance of the CDV in the 1860s, however, large numbers of German studio portaits appear. At mid-century we see men in frock coats and women in voluminous dresses. Boys has longish over the ears hair. Very young boys wore dresses. Tunic suits with military styling such as decorative belts and buttons were popular for boys. The styling of the yunics varied widely. They were mostly long sleeve, but we see short sleeves as well. The tunics were commonly cut short, rather like long shirts. They were mostly worn with long pants. Blouses had small collars or none at all. We see some sailor suits, but they do not seem very common. We also notice cut-away jackets with vests and small collars. Boys mostly wore long pants. We see some younger boys wearing knee pants or bloomer knickers, but only very young bys and this was not very common. Older boys wore sack suits, with lapel jackets and vests. Girls wore dresses with a combination of pinafores, petticoats, and patalettes. Like their mothers, the dresses were often voluminous.

Bätcher Family (1860s)

Here we have the Bätcher family (figure 1). All we know about the family is that they are German and that the boys are Max and Georg. They look about 8 and 11 years old. The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken in the 1860s. We do not know where in Germany the family lived. Of course in the 1860s Germany as a united country did not yet exist. The family looks to have been a prosperous middle-class family. The adults look rather old, they may have been the grand parents. The boys are dressed identically in what look like velvet jackets. The jackets are done with a kind of tunic look and are decorated with large button and piping. The jackets do noy have collars. Notice also that the sleeves are cut rather short. This is not a style we have commonly seen, but in the years before ready-made clothes, styles were more varied. The boys wear long pants. Kneepants were not yet commonly worn. The boys have relatively short hair, but the style was to wear down to the ears, some times even covering the ears. The close cropped style so popular at the turn of the 20th century was not yet popular in Germany.

Unidentified Rinteln/Bad Nenndorf Family(1860s)

Here we have a portrait from a German family of the 1860s. The portrait was taken in Rinteln or Bad Nenndorf which are located rather close to each other. The little girl's name was Marie. The boy is August who sadly died at the young age of 9 years due to thyphus. Unfortunately we do not know their family name. Father wears a frock coat with a low-cut vest. Mothers wears a voluminous dark dress. Perhaos she is in mourning. Note the center-part hair cut. The boy wears hair combed over his ears. The close-cropped hair was not yet very common. The boy wears a belted tunic with just a hint of a collar showing. I'm not sure what color this may have been. The little girl wears checkered dress with a dark pinafore, but I'm not sure what color.

Unidentified German Family (1860s)

A German reader has found an unidentified family. We believe it to be German, but we can not be positive. The mother and father in the center, surrounded by their five children, four boys and a girl. The children look to be about 10-18 years old. The boys all wear sack suits with curiously different bows. The younger boy wears a suit with matching trousers. He has a rather large collar for the period which looks like an Eton collar. He wears it without a bow and his jacket does not have lapels. The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken about 1860. It could easily have been taken anytime in the late 50s or early 60s. The girl wears a dress belted at the waist and with a full skirt. It is a light colored dress, but we have no idea about the color.

Unidentified Collogne Family (1860s)

Here we see a CDV portrait of a young German mother with her four children (figure 1). They look to be a comfortable Victorian family. The two boys wear mathing tunics with long pants. Both boys have their hair down to their ears. Note the great hobby horse. Another child who looks to be a girl has hr dress styled like her brothers tunics. She is holding some sort of pot. The family was from Coeln. That may be Collogne, but we are not sure. The portrait is undated, but wewould giess was taken in the late-1860s. There is a note on the back, presumably the name of the family, but it is difficult to read.

Unidentified Rendsburg Family (late-1860s)

This studio portrait of the children in a German family is unidentified. The children look to be about 1-13 years old. We think the children wearing dresses are all girls. Even though they all have short hsir, the center part is a strong clue. They seem to be identically dressed, but the older girl has a necklace and her dress is done in a similar, but slightly different fabric pattern. We are not sure to what extent the different fabric pattern was chosen conciously to differentiate her. There could also have been color diifferences. The cut of the dresses are virtually identical. The boy wears a cut-away jacket that was only slightly cut away. He has a small collar showing and his long pants are cut very full. The portrait was taken at the Amerikanisches Photographie in Rendsburg. It looks to have been taken in the late-1860s, in part because of the elaborate background. Also the boy's cut away jacket seems more in keeping with the 1870s when the style began to decline abd the jaxkets were less severely cut away at the bottom.







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Created: 3:32 AM 1/15/2009
Last updated: 5:33 AM 10/6/2010