German Sailor Suits: Inter-War and War Years--Decade Trends (1930s)

Figure 1.--These German children were photographed in 1931. About half of the children are wearing white or ligght-colored (striped) sailor suits. We are not sure what the groupo is. The age difference among the boys seems to great for a ckass group. Thge other bioys wear mostly white shirts. The sailor suits all seem very similar, the basic choixe seenms to be whire or striped suits. A German reader writes, "My idea is that this is a youth group pictured here. In a German school class picture there is never a flag shown." We are not sure what the flag is. It looks like the Civil flag of Thuringia (white and red). We are not sure that this is a youth group, both because some of the children are younger than is normal for youth groups and there is no uniform. The bulding behind does look like a school. Thus we think this may be some sort of after school activity group, but not a class group or a formal youth group. Another reader writes, "They could go to the same school. They seem to have been in a competion because many are wearing a star-shaped badge of ome kind. The older boys also have an additional badge." Click on the image for a fuller discussion.

The popularity of the sailor suit in Germany changed significantly in the 1930s, especially after the mid30s. We still see German boys commonly wearing sailor suits in the early 30s. Even teenagers wore them, especially younger teenagers. A good example is an unidentified boy in a middle-class family. The sailor suit did not disaapear in the 1930s, but became much less common. Again school portraits are a good reflection of popular styles. We still see sailor suits, in school photographs, but we genrally ee only a small number of boys wearing them in each class--especially by the mid-30s. There was also a change in the age of the boys wearing them. Especially after the NAZIs seized power, we see fewer older boys wearung them.We see German boys commonly wearng sailor suits to dress up and to school in the early 30s. A good example is two German boys in a family grouping. We think with the coming of the NAZI era in 1933 that the sailor suit declined in popularity. I don't think that this had anything to do with official or adult criticisms of the navy. Rather boys and probably many parents seemed to have found the Hitler Youth uniform more appropriate in the New Germany of the Third Reich. Perhaps some did not see the sailor suit fashion as the proper image for tough NAZI youth. Perhaps the NAZI Government set guidlines for styles of clothes produced and may have encouraged private companies producing boys' clothes to deemphasize production. The sailor suit's association with artistocracy and the middleclass made it unpopular with the NAZIs in the 1930s because the Party was trying to break down the prevailing class structure to create a more unified Volk and Reich. Hopefully German visitors to this page can provide some insights. For whatever reason, sailor suits, at least for older boys, seemed to have gradually declined in popularity during the 1930s and were even less common during the War years (1939-45)

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Created: 2:15 AM 9/12/2011
Last updated: 4:04 AM 9/13/2011