Figure 1.--Three of the brothers are seen here in this detail from a 1913 portrait. Fredy the youngest boy appears to be wearing a school smock, although this is conjecture on our part. Click on the image to see all three brothers in 1913--the years just vefore World War I broke out. |
One garment that is not much in evidence is smocks. We know that smocks were not commonly worn by school children in Germany, although they were worn by younger children. We have less information on Austria and Hungary. As we have numerous portraits of this family, including images of the boys when they were quite young, we believe that they did not commonly wear smocks. One 1913 portrait, however, does show Fredy in a smock. He would have been about 7 years old. We believe it may have been a school smock. It is worn with a wide white collar and bow. Unfortunately we have no solid information to go on other than the image. We can make some inferences, based n the images, buy they are only speculative at this time.
One garment that is not much in evidence is smocks. As we have numerous portraits of this family, including images of the boys when they were quite young, only one of those portraits shows one of the boys wearing a smock. It could be that all of the boys wore smocks, but they were simoly always photographed in dressier outfits. We are inclined to believe, however, given the number of available images, that the boys did not commonly wear smocks.
We know that smocks were not commonly worn by school children in Germany, although they were worn by younger children. We have less information on Austria and Hungary. Readers may want to look at the smock page for these countries to determine what the conventions were for smocks. In 1913, of course, Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
HBC has no information on Austrian smocks. Austria was not a country that we have generally associated with smocks. We had assumed that they were no commonly worn there, but in fact have no actual information. One HBC reader has submitted a photograph of an Austrian boy wearing a rather short smock. Note the partial front buttoning which looks like a Rugby-style pullover shirt. It looks to have been taken some time after World War II, but the photograph is undated so we can't be sure. Nor do we know how typical this was of the smocks worn by Austrian boys. A French reader lived in Austria for a few years as a boy. He reports, "I lived in the Niderösterreich region of Austria in the early 1950s. Boys there after World War II did not commonly wear smocks. I think that they were more common before the War. Some schoolboys did wear a kind of smock to school. It was a rathervshort smock, almost like a shirt, but it was not tucked into the pants. There were both front and
back buttoning styles. The kids called it 'Schüler Kittel'. I myelf almost never wore the Kittel."
One doesn't usually think of Germany in connection with smocks. Smocks do not appear to
have been very popular in Germany, although admittedly I have little information at this time. We do note a variety of images of pre-school children wearing smocks which seems to
continue into the 1930s. HBC has noted some younger German boys school boys wearing
smocks, during the late 19th and early 20th century. After World War I (1914-18) smocks
virtually disappeared as fashions associated with the English and French became unpopular.
After the NAZIs seized power in 1933, smocks were no longer commonly seen in Germany,
except by younger pre-school children
HBC at this time has little information about Hungarian boys wearing smocks. We do not know to what extent the smock was worn in Hungary. We do have some information about
smocks use as school uniforms beginning in the 1960s when the government mandated them
as a kind of school uniform. This continued through the 1990s for boys including older boys in secondary school.
The youngest brother is Fredy. He was born about 1906. Like his older brothers that he wore sailor suits. Fredy unlike his older brothers would not have been caught up in World War I. One 1913 portrait, however, does show Fredy in a smock. He would have been about 7 years old. He is the only one of the brothers we notice wearing a smock. We are unsure if this means that the others boys did not wear them or just were not photographed in them. Does this mean that the smock was a new fashion just intoduced in thr 1910s?
Fredy wears a back buttoning smock, either in balck or dark blue. The dark blue seems the most likely. He wears it with what looks like a rounded collar, but we can not be sure because of the large floppy bow. This does not seem to be a reguklation school bow as hios brothers wore an identical bow 15 years earlier. The collar is not like the wide wkite collars we have nloticed on most smocks. These smocks lie ion the boys' shoulders. Rather Fredy's smock seems to be more of a stiff Eton-like collar that rises high on the boys' neck. Notice the decorative detailing on the smock.
We believe it may have been a school smock. It is worn with a wide white collar and bow. This looks very similar to the school smocks we have noted in Italy and France at the time. We do not know yet if this was a common school style in Ausrto-Hungary at the time. The fact that the boys in their many other portraits are not pictured in smocks leads us to believe that this was opribably more of a school smock than a garment wiorn at home--but we are not at all sure avout this.
While we think this may be a school smock. We note that in the early 20th century that it was not uncommon in affluent or event comfortably well off families in many European countries for the younger boys to wear smocks at home. Often they did nit like it--especially if they were scgool age boys. The link here goes to a story about such a boy ibn England.
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