Figure 1.--This German school boy wears pants cut below the knee, but without the ornamental buttons commonly associated with knee pants. The question becomes, is he wearing longish cut short pants or knee pants.

This German school boy wears pants cut below the knee, but without the ornamental buttons commonly associated with knee pants. The question becomes, is he wearing longish cut short pants or knee pants. The photograph looks to have been taken in the 1920s, but we are not positive.

The Boy

The boy here is unidentified and we do not even know where in Germany the photograph is taken. He looks to be about 7 years old.

School Clothes

This is obviously a school photograph. You can see the boy's book satchel, although he does not have a lunch case which were also common. He seems to be wearing a tunic-style jacket. The boy wears pants cut below the knee, but without the ornamental buttons commonly associated with knee pants. The question becomes, is he wearing longish cut short pants or knee pants.

Chronology

A reader writes, "Do we know the date of this photo? I would say 1920s. By then, German boys were usually wearing short pants, I believe, even if they were cut long enough to qualify as "knee pants." Not all knee pants had the buttons at the hem, of course, and some short pants still did. There seems to be a period during the 1920s where knee pants and short pants are really the same thing or where the terminology doesn't matter very much." The photograph looks to have been taken in the 1920s, but we are not positive. The outdoors snapshot surely dates it after the turn of the 20th century. Outsoors family snapshors were taken before 1900, but the numbers are very small in comparison to the number asfter 1900. The cadet style cap was a school cap. Many secondary schools had these caps. Younger boys also wore them, but I think more as a generic school style than an actual official school cap. These caps were especilly coomon in the 1920s.