Figure 1.--This brother and sister was from Mörchingen. (Mörchingen in 1905 was part of Germany and had been so for 35 years since the Franco-Prussian War. It was located in Lorraine, acquired from France. After World War I in 1919, Morhange and the rest of Alsace-Lorraine were reunited with France. The children here were probably photographed about 1905. Black long stockings were extremely populsar at the time. They were even worn with white outfits like the boy's sailor suit here.

We do not yet have definitive information about the different colors of long stockings worn by German boys and variations over time. Part of our problem here is that most of the available images are black and white photographs. Thus we can gnerally assess darkness, but not color shades. We have some color images from the 1950s and 60s showing shades like tan and grey, but our color information for the late-19th and early 20th century when long stockings were more common, is very limited. We note American boys wearing colored stockings such as red and blue in the late 19th century. We are not yet sure if this was also the case in Germany. We believe black long stockings were the most common, but colored stockings may have been worn.

Black

German boys in the late 19th and early 20th century commonly wore long black stockings. There was relatively little diversity here. The long stockings worn by boys were mostly black or other dark colors. Here I am not sure if nlack was as dominant in Germaby at the turn of the 29th century as it was in America. We know black was common, but we are just not sure how populasr. We note children wearing blavk long stockings even with white outfits. A good example here is a Dresden boy. The colors of long stockings began to change after World War I. After the War, brown or grey long cotton stockings began to appear. Black long stockings did not disappear, but increasinglky after the war became seen as rather a dressy style.

Brown/tan Shades

A basic change occurred during the 1920s. Increasingly boys began wearing brown, beige and grey stockings, epecially by the mid-1920s. In most cases boys' long stockings were brown like the earth or as many remember, as chocolade. Also light brown stockings appeared, and to a more limited extent more brightly colored ones. Gradually lighter shades became the most common. Dark long stockings did not entirely disappear and might be worn for formal occassions. It was the lighter colors, however that contiued to be worn in West Germany until the late 1950s and into the 1960s in East Germany. When tights appeared in the late 1950s and early 60s, a much greater variety of colors appeared. A HBC reader writes, "As a general statement about long stockings, I think it is certainly true to say that brown shades was the usual color in Germany. But here I think we must distinguish between the brown plain stockings (this is almost certainly the color worn by the oldest boy in the suspender shorts image we got from the Hosiery Musuem) and the patterned stockings which tended to come in a variety of colors."

Grey

HBC had thought that brown and tan shades were by far the most common, as they were in America. We note some German boys wearing grey long stockings. A German reader tells us, "In my youth (born 1935) I wore brown long stockings in the winter up to 1949. This was the common colour for boy's stockings. The last stockings which my mother bought in fall 1948, however, were grey. Possibly, she couldn't find the brown ones anymore because of my size. I suppose that the grey cotton stockings were offered for girls and small adult females and therefore still available."

White

I do not believe that white stockings were commonly worn by German boys. but have little information at this time. We see German boys commonly wearing long stockings, but not white long stockings. German girls did commonly wear white long stockings, but the boys much less so. We do see some younger boys wearing white stockings. We see relatively few such images. Most seem to have been boys dressed up for formal occassions, but we have seen some boys even wearing them to school. We have, however, found some. Most of them seem to be in the inter-war era (1920s and 30s).

Bright Colors

We have no information on bright-colored long stockings being worn, at least in the 20th century. As far as we know the only colors commonly worn, besides blavk and white, in Germany during the mid-20th century were these light stiockings in beign, brown, and grey. Interesytingkly there seem to have been more diversity in the late 19th century when patterened stockings, usually stipped, were available.

Created: 11:25 PM 8/19/2007
Last updated: 3:19 AM 8/20/2007