Figure 1.--Here we see a mother with her three sons. They look to be about 6-13 years old. Notice the boys wear identical sleeveless sweaters although the younger boy's sweater is a different color. We suspect that mother knitted them. The snapshot looks to have been taken in the 1930s. The image comes from a German soyrce. We at first thought it was British, but mother's dress looks rather German. And British boys often wore ties wih their sweatrs.

Sweaters are widely worn by German boys. The northern European climate makes the sweater a pratical garment for childre. But because girls mostly wore dresses , you do not see nerly as many girls wearing sweaters. The weather was not varable like the British weather. Thus there was less need for a garment the children could take off and put back on. There was, however a need for cold weather clothing. We do not yet have a fix on the chronology of sweaters. We see sweaters mostly in the 20th century. This may partially why vesta were so common in the 19th century. They were worn in circumstances like sweaters were worn in the 19th century. We notice quite a few styles of sweaters. This was made somewhat complicated by the fact that these garments were often hand knitted at home. Many European boys during the 1920s began wearing sweaters, which tended to be made longer than now, extending below the waist line. We have observed this convention in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands as well as other countries. We do not know why this convention developed. We also notice boys tucking their sweaters into thewaistband of their pants, some you never see today. An example is an unidentified schoolboy in 1943. Later the swearters became shorter and were cut at the waist and often tucked inside the pants. We also notice boys wearing belts over their sweaters which meant the belts served no real purpose other than adornment.

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Created: 11:51 PM 11/27/2006
Last updated: 11:51 PM 11/27/2006