Here you can search through our archive of Swiss schools alphabetically. Here you can easily check on a specific school. Many schools did not have names, but took on the name of the neigborhood or village where they were located. Some city schools took the names of the street where they were located. We have several schools archived, but of course is only a small fraction of Swiss schools. We incourage readers to contrinute any information they can recall about their schools. Here photographs are wonderful, but not absolutely required. These individual school pages help expand our coverage and understanding both about the academic program as well as school fashions in the many different schools around the country. Raders who find their schools in our archive are incouraged to add information about the school.Some information is available on individual Swiss schools, showing both the various styles worn by the boys and available information on the school regulations. The information is abstracted from the available images, but some information is available on the several different schools. We have archived schools from both the French- and German-speaking catons. It is likely that boys in the Italian catons also wore smocks, but HBC at this time does not have any information on these schools.
This is the Madetswil primary school, Zurich canton, photographed on November 5, 1953. Madetswil is a village with, I believe, only a single school. The teacher standing at the rear is Herr Theo Allenbach. These children seem to be about 8 or 9 years old. One boy wears knickers with suspenders but most of the other boys wear short trousers with either long stockings or knee socks. The two boys with long stockings in the front row seem to be wearing heavy woolen hosiery
(notice the ribbing). The second boy from the left is obviously wearing a Leibchen with supporters for the stockings, which is obvious because of the way the tops of his stockings show under his short trousers with a gap between the shorts and the stocking top. This is obviously not an embarrassment for him as it was for some boys. The girls wear pinafores. All of the boys seem to be wearing sweaters, several with the suspenders on top rather than underneath.
This class is from a secondary school called Milchbuck School in Zurich. The children are 13 or 14 years old. The photo was taken on January 19, 1932. Their teacher, Herr Zuppinger, is standing at the right. Notice his very correct wing collar with four-in-hand tie and three-piece suit. A few of the boys wear suits and ties, but just as common are pullover sweaters with open-collared shirts. There is a mixture of trouser styles for the boys. At least one boy wears long trousers. Two others wear plus fours. Two boys wear short-trousers suits, one with knee socks, and the other (the most formally dressed boy in the class), sitting in the
front row, wears a spiffy short trousers suit with collar and tie and black long stockings. Notice the ornamental buttons on his trousers, which was common for boys wearing short trousers suits. His parents were probably more conservative than the parents of the other children and wanted him to look especially dressed up for the class photo. He also wears the more old-fashioned hightop black shoes. The girls wear sweaters and skirts, and, in one case, a plaid dress.
This is a class of 10-year olds from M�nchaltorf School in Monchaltorf, Switzerland, a village ner Zurich in the Zurich canton. The class portrait was taken on May 5, 1949 [Charles, was this 1959?] in the early spring. The teacher was Herr Muggli. The girls most all wear dresses, most with pinafores. The boys, at least the ones in front, mostly wear short trousers with knee socks since the weather was beginning to turn somewhat warmer. But notice that one boy, third from the right in the first row, continues to wear his winter long stockings with supporters. (You can see the garter clasp on his left leg). Since the stockings are very long and very smoothly and tautly gartered, he is undoubtely wearing a "stocking shirt" or Strapsleibchen with four elastic supporters with metal clips. The stockings are cotton, not woolen, and relatively light weight. The color seems to be light tan. The black stockings of earlier years had almost disappeared by the late-40s except for very formal occasions such as confirmations and first communions. Most of the children wear sweaters.
Actually our village had two primary schools which was unusual for a small village. Switzerland of course is a multi-lingual country. The convention established for schools was that in small villages, instruction would be in the language of the majority language group. Towns and cities would have schools in both Frech and German. The village school was supervised by catholic nuns and the priest and was only in session for 6 months, as during the summer all the kids had to help with farming. The instruction was in French. Therfore my parents organized a German speaking school without the catholic component. It was attended by the chuldren of the sanitorium employees as well as the children of some patients. At that time antibiotics did not yet exist and many patients spent months or years at the sanatorium. Therefore many families followed them and lived near by. Our primary school was very small and was a one-room school. We had kids in every grade from 1st to 6th grade. In school we had to wear the obligatory smock.
This is the second grade at Muhlebach School in Amriswil, Switzerland (1951), which would make the children about 7-8 years old. Someone with an interest in the class has drawn red circles around several of the children obviously for purposes of identification. The children wear a variety of clothes of still what look like pre-War styles. Most of the boys wear short trousers with either knee socks or long stockings. The long stockings seem to be either light tan (beige) or white. A couple of girls in the back row are wearing pinafores. Notice the prevalence of sweaters with suspenders worn on top. One boy wears T-strap sandals.
Hans Holbein the Younger has provided us a glimpse of a school in 1516. It is apparently a school operated by his friend Oswald Myconius, we think in Berne. While this is in Switzerland, it probably represents a reasonable depiction of schools throughout Germany. Myconius could not pursue a clerical career because he married. This was why many men turned to teaching at the time. His wife is helping in his school class. This of course changed with the Reformation when Protestant churches allowed clerics to marry. Note how few children that they are teaching. The painting here is very elongated, leading some art experts to speculate that it was hung over the door of the school in Berne as a kind of advertisement.
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Here we have a school portrait from the Niederhelfenswil village school in St. Gallen during 1969. St. Gallen is a German-speaking canton. The girls all wear dresses orr skirts. Bib-front styling seems popular. Most wear knee socks, but some girls wear tights. The boys wear a variety of casual shirts and sweaters. Most seem to be wearing short pants and at least the boys in front were barefoot. This seems to have been common in the warm weathe, at least for the boys.
This is a kindergarten class from the city of Zurich. The name of the school is Nordheim. The photo was taken on February 27, 1951, hence the winter clothing. These children are about 5 years old. Most of the children wear long stockings, although we see a few boys with the baggy plus-fours that somtimes substituted for short trousers in the winter time. The girls wear dresses and pinafores. The boys wear pullover sweaters. One boy in the third row, extreme left, wears a fashionably tied bow tie. Some of the boys also wear suspenders over their sweaters. Notice the boy riding a toy horse at the right. His clothes are interesting because they illustrate the length of long stockings worn with brief short trousers. You can see that he wears supporters, undoubtedly attached to a bodice, which fasten on the side just below his hips. He is wearing beige long stockings that look white. Beige was a more common color for school wear. Notice also the footwear of this boy--slippers with a band around the ankle that look almost like ballet slippers. These are probably only for indoor wear while he is at school. He would change to more substantial shoes for wearing outdoors. Notice the toy train in the foreground. The teacher, Frau S. Zollinger, is a little hard to see. She is standing in the last row, fourth from the left.
This is a class of 10- or 11-year olds from the town of Oberembrach primary school. Their teacher, Herr K�gi is standing at the rear with a sweater under his suit jacket. The photo is dated November 11, 1952. All the children seem to be wearing long stockings except for one boy at the right (in front) who has on plus-fours. Notice that nearly all the boys wear suspenders with their short trousers which they wear on top of their pullover sweaters, which means, of course, that the sweaters have to be tucked into the trousers. This was a common style in both Germany and Switzerland in the years after the war. This seems more commin at this school than most schools we have looked at. We see a boy with a belt rather than suspenders standing in the third row, but he, too, has his sweater tucked into his trousers. One boy in the center wears ribbed cotton stockings while most of the others seem to have on stockings of a smoother texture. These and othr school photographs show that long stockings were still very common at Swiss schools during the early-1950s.
Oberflachs is a village in the municipality of Schinznach, Canton Aargau. It is located in northern Swutzerkand close to the German border. Te area has beenninhabited since Rijan times, perhaos earliet. It was a poor area because of th limited tillable land. The village is some 6 km south west of the town of Brugg. The photo was taken in 2017. The small village school has a day about tradition and the children are asked to wear their local traditional folk costumes. Here we see a first grade schoolgirl wearing her costume in bare feet, according the local tradition.
This is a class photo of 5th graders (mostly 11 years olds) at the only primary school in Oberglatt, Switzerland, in Zurich canton. The picture was taken on November 19, 1941. The young teacher, wearing a bow tie and standing in the rear, is Herr B. Dunki. Nearly all the boys wear sweaters, somme with zippers that open
part of the way down their chests. Some of these have collars. Many of the boys wear short trousers with long cotton stockings held up by hose supporters. Notice the rubber-button of the garter clasp on the
boy sitting on the ground in front at the far left. Some of the boys wear rather full plus-fours in place of shorts and long stockings. A few of the boys are wearing suit jackets but mostly without neckties. These are prosperous-looking children from Swiss middle-class families, who look rather untouched by the war that was going on around them. Notice the girls' pigtails tied at the ends by white ribbons. It was a chilly day in November so the boys and girls have winter clothes on although they can be comfortable out of doors without overcoats or
outer jackets or gloves. Notice the long stockings of the boys in front. In one case the stockings are of smooth texture while in another case they are heavily ribbed. The school has the same name as the town since there is only one primary school there.
This is a class at the Sekundar Oerlikon near Zurich. Most of the boys seem to be wearing short trousers, either with sweaters or as part of short trouser suits. This photo was taken in Zurich on February 26, 1932. The rather heavy-set teacher, Herr Wydler, is standing in the center, or is he the other adult male further to the left? Only one teacher's name is given, although two appear in the photograph. Two of the boys, who seem to be about 15 or 16, have on black knee socks with a thin stripe around the top. Notice also the wearing of sporty woolen ankle socks on top of both the knee socks and the long stockings in some cases. The boys with black long stockings wear suits but with open-necked collars rather than neckties. It seems to have been very common for Swiss parents to keep teenage boys in short trousers at least up to the age of 15 or 16 during the 1920s and 1930s although we occasionally see teenage boys in long trousers also. Probably this was a decision of Swiss parents and would indicate whether they were more conservative or more liberal in their attitudes toward boys' clothing.
This school photo, taken at Ottenbach, Switzerland, in Zurich canton, is dated October 24, 1949. The school has the same name as the village, apparently because there is only a single public school there. Since the season is still autumn, most of the boys wear knee socks with their short trousers, but since winter is approaching one
boy wears plus-fours and another wears beige long stockings with his shorts. From this boy's sitting posture, you can see how long the stockings of the 1950s were knitted, almost completely covering the legs and held in place with garters attached to a Strapsleibchen or stocking shirt. These children seem to be about eleven years
old--sixth graders, probably. Most of the boys wear pullover sweaters but a few have on just shirts. Notice the boy on the right in the front row with his sleeves rolled up. The variety of hosiery in this photo is interesting. One boy wears white knee socks while most of the others wear dark grey, blue, or brown socks. Some knee socks have stripes around the tops and turn over with cuffs(like those commonly worn in England) while others just seem to have knit-in elastic that keep them up. The teacher standing in the rear with horn-rimmed glasses is Herr M. Jost. One boy, standing in the second row at the far right, is wearing a white apron, presumably because of lab work that he was doing just before the children were gathered for the photo. One boy with bare knees has scraped his knee playing and has an adhesive plaster over it. This school obviously took good care of their children's health.
This is another Swiss primary school. The children look to be about 10 years old, which would mean they are fifth graders. The school is simply called Ottikon School, the same as the town, which is in Zurich canton, one of the German-speaking Swiss cantons. The date of the photo is March 19, 1952, late winter just before Spring,
which you can tell from the bare limbs of the trees in the background. The young teacher is named Herr Burri. Notice that almost all the boys wear short trousers with separate button-on elastic suspenders. Many German and Swiss boys wore suspenders with their shorts because belts don't work as well with narrow hips and suspenders help keep the children neater with their shirts tucked in and the trousers don't sag uncomfortably. Some boys wear sweaters and others just open-collared shirts. Many of the girls wear pinafores. We see one boy on the extreme left wearing the baggy plus-fours, which (in this case) look almost like plus-eights since the knickers come down so low, almost to his ankles. But long stockings with short trousers are much more common, obviously worn with Strapsleibchen or stocking-shirts (bodices that button down the front and have four elastic supporters attached, two in front and two on the sides). Such bodices keep the stockings neatly in place without wrinkles. Notice the boy in the front row (third from left), whose stockings are perfectly smooth almost as though he were wearing tights. But of course they are stockings, not tights, which didn't come on the market in Europe until about 1959.
This photo was taken during the winter, January 27, 1943 at the Freie Schule, R�mistrasse. in the city of Zurich. The children are 8th graders, about 12 years old. Some of the girls wear pinafores. One girl has a rather unique sweater with a slit for her belt. Many of the boys are warmly dressed in sweaters and woolen knickers (plus-fours) worn with woolen knee socks. At least one of the boys wears short trousers, a suit jacket, and long brown cotton stockings held up by supporters (probably attached to a Strumpfhemd or "stocking shirt", also referred to often as a Strapsleibchen--an undergarment with four elastic garters attached to the bottom). His shorts expose just a bit of his white underpants when he is sitting on the floor. The girls wear long stockings as well and usually have pigtails, a common style for Swiss and German girls of the period. Their teacher, standing in the rear, is Herr Stiefel. This was a "Free School" or public school of which there were several in Zurich. It is simply identified by the street on which it was located, R�mistrasse. These children are probably in their final year of primary school.
Thus is a secondary school class from Russikon, a town in the Zurich canton, a German-speaking canton.
The name of the school is the same as the town, presumably because there was only one school there. The students are about 14-15 years old, but the school name in the notation does not include the word "Secondary". Perhaps Russikon had one school that taught both primary and secondary students. Many of the girls are are wearing bib-front pinafores looking more like aprons moters wore in kitchens. One boy looks to be wearing an apron, but we think that they are actually baggy trousers. The date of the photo is November 18, 1954. The teacher. standing in the back row in a double-breasted suit with shirt and tie is Herr A. Schlatter. Most of the children are wearing wool sweaters. The boys seem to wear both short trousers and long trousers. In the front row, we see two teenage
boys wearing both styles. One wears a woolen collared jacket with long trousers while the boy next to him of the same age wears the more conservative cardigan sweater over an uncollared shirt with heavy ribbed long stockings and boots (but with additional ankle socks turned down over his boot tops for extra warmth on his feet). We see this
style of additional ankle socks quite often in Switzerland during the 1940s and 1950s. The long stockings are very tautly gartered, probably with what was known as a Strapsgurtel, a male garterbelt similar to
what modern hockey players wear. The ribbing in this boy's stockings match the ribbing of his sweater. Maybe his mother knitted both the stockings and the sweater. This boy is probably too old to be wearing a Leibchen to keep his stockings in place. Notice that one boy standing to the left next to the teacher wears a sweater that is tucked into his belted trousers, which could be shorts, plus-fours, or long trousers. One girl wears knee socks while another wears striped anklets.
A group of 12-year old children in R�dlingen School. R�dlingen is a village in the Zurich canton with only a single school; therefore the name of the school is the same as the town. The photo was taken on November 9, 1955. Their teacher, Herr Maier, stands at the back with a suit and striped tie. The boys seem to wear either knickers with knee socks or short trousers with Strapsleibchen and long, rather heavy-textured stockings. Notice the ribbing on the long stockings of the boy kneeling in the center of the front row. Another boy in the front row, towards the left, seems to have sportily textured long stockings as well, but without the wide ribbing. The boy close to the center in the front row who is wearing plus-fours (baggy knickers) has on argyle knee socks but without garters to keep them up, so that they look saggy and wrinkled. Children often care little about such things although their parents or teachers usually take a stricter view of neatness in boys' dress. Some 12-year old boys still wore Strapsleibchen or "stocking shirts" with supporters for long stockings; but older boys sometimes preferred garter belts as more grown-up. Of course, we have no way of knowing from the photographs what their mothers prescribed for them. Notice the heavy woolen sweaters. At least one boy is wearing a suit jacket. The girls wear dresses and pinafores, probably a requirement. Notice, too, that the boys who wear suspenders with their trousers tend to wear them on top of their weaters so that the sweaters must be tucked into the trousers.
At age 12 in 1948 I began boarding school and went to the same school for 8 years. This was not as common in Switzerland and other European countries as it was in Britain so I thought I write you a few notes about my years at the boardingschool. It was an all boys' school. It was called "Evangelische Lehranstalt, Schiers." There were about 350 boys boarding there from the ages of 11 to about 19 years old. We were housed by age. I was about 11 years old when I got there and I had to share my room with three other boys. Discipline was strict and our daily schedules were coordinated from morning utill bed-time. This was a dramatic change for me. Surrounded by 350 boys from all over Switzerland, far away from home, required considerable adjustment on my part. I was very ill prepared for my step from the elementary school to the secondary boarding school and had to repeat one year. I was not trained well enough to keep up with the fast pace of teaching at the boarding school and was also very shy and had problems interfacing with so many class-mates. After about a year, I had adjusted to the changes. Our school had a well used court yard. Here we would often gather after classes fr a range of of fun activities. I will tell you a bit about clothing. During the summer months all the boys wore in shorts and knee-socks and depending on the weather wore a sweater over their shirts. On Sundays we had to wear something nicer, which consisted mostly of knickers with knee-socks and a jacket. While I was at boarding school I was active in the Scout-troop at the school. We too had many activities and many weekend-camping trips. The one thing we did not do, we did not organize a summer camp, as all the members of the school understandably wanted to remain at home during the summer.
We have a detail of a class member from a larger class photo, taken on February 2, 1959, at Schlatt School, a primary school in the Zurich canton. The boy seems to be about 10 or maybe 11 years old. He wears a short
trousers suit apparently (note the suit style jacket) but with a cotton sports shirt underneath and no necktie underneath a v-necked sweater. He wears long beige or very light tan woolen stockings which reach up
very high on his legs. He is obviously wearing a Strapsleibchen (a bodice with four hose supporters attached). Notice the very close cropped hair. Also the low cut shoes. The class is clearly of mixed gender. A girl sitting in back of him wears a dress with black long stockings. This is rather late for long stockings in Germany. Tights appeared in the late 1950s and long stiockings qyuickly disappeared, at leasrt in Werstern Europe. We still see long stockings being worn by some Swiss boys from conservative families into the early 1960s. This was longer than boys in Germany.
This is the Schlieren School, in Schlieren, Switzlerland (Zurich Canton), taken on November 11, 1949. The teacher is Herr Ernst Boller. The children are about 11- or 12-years old--probably the last year of primary school. Note the almost universal use of pinafores for the girls (with a few without), and the pigtails on some. The boys seem mostly dressed in the baggy knickers and knee socks that were popular. In the first row you can see argyle knee socks, one of which has slipped down because of the lack of elastic in the top. One boy in the front row has the strap of his knickers unbuttoned so that you can see how these trousers fastened around the leg. The strap has a button on it so that the closure around the leg just below the knee was by button in this case rather than by an adjustable buckle, which was sometimes the case. One boy wears short trousers with knee socks, while another wears shorts with woolen long stockings One boy standing in the third row wears a jacket with a sweater underneath. None of the boys wears a tie, but the tieless shirts seem in all cases to be buttoned up to the neck.
We see a photo at the well-known Schmidshof School in Switzerland, taken in 1941 during World War II. The school is located in Weinfelden, Switzerland, very near the German border in the northeast of the country and famous as a banking and railroad center. The town is very old. The Schmidshof School may be a private primary school, altthough I'm not certain. Weinfelden is the capital of the Thurgau canton. Only three children are shown here. They are all first graders, which means that they are approximately 6 years old. The class surely larger than this, however. We don't know why only three children were singled out for the school photograph. The boys wear short trousers with zipper front jackets and long woolen stockings. The girl wears a cotton dress, also with long stockings.
There appears to be foliage in the background behind the wall where the children are sitting, so the weather must have been fairly clement (probably either Spring or Fall). The long stockings were standard wear for school children in the the 1930s and 1940s in Switzerland, often worn even in seasons when the weather was not frigid.
This was the Sihfield School--one of the several schools in the in the Zurich canton. It is in an archive collected by the Lehrmittelverlag. This means the Society for Teaching Aids or Teaching Aids Society. I am not entrirely sure what kind of school it was, but it looks like a secondary school. A reader writes, "Is "secondary school" correct? In America this would be the upper levels of primary school--age 12 (7th grade). Well American schools trat grades 6-8 variously. There were primary (elementary) schools with grades 7 and 8. There were also middle schools and junior high schools that had some comination of grades 6-9. European schools are somewhat different. Primary school children who met the academic standards and whose parents could afford it, often began to attend secondary schools at about 11 or 12 years of age. I suspect this is the case here. Our Swiss reades may know more. Here we have a photograph of a 6th year class/form (6 Klasse) in 1928. The teacher's name was Herr Kern. We think this was a class of the younger children at the school. The children obviously are German speaking. The children look about 11-12 years old. The boys in the front row wear mainly single breasted short-pants suits. One boy has a pullover sweater instead of a suit. Some boys wear formal shirts with ties while others wear their collars open. The class seems to be about evenly divided between boys who wear knee socks and those who wear long stockings.
Another Swiss class--this one from the town of St�fa. St�fa is a village in the Zurich canton, but not
in the city of Zuruch. The portrait was taken January 8, 1948. Interestingly despite the Winter time frame, it does not look very cold on the day the photograph was taken. we do not even see any smow. No one is wearing an overcoat, but the boys all wear nice warm sweaters. The children probably just came out from their classroom for few minutes. They look to be 10-year oldsk. The school name is the same as the village, probably because there was only one school located there in 1948. The teacher with horn-rimmed classes at the rear is Herr W. Keller. Notice that even in the 1940s, most teachers were men. Most of the boys wear short trousers with long stockings and Strapsleibchen. The long stockings are in part seasonal. We also see a few wear plus-fours with knee socks. The girls wear pinafores which presumablywas a school rule.
A group of 6-year old children, apparently 1st graders, at the T�ssfeld School in Winterthur, Switzerland, a
town close to Zurich, almost a suburb of the city. The photo was taken February 18, 1954. The teacher standing in back is Frau Schuler. All the children seem to be wearing long woolen stockings with hose supporters and short trousers. You can see the garter clasp of the boy sitting at the extreme left. Two boys, however, standing at
the extreme left are apparently wearing plus-four knickers which were sometimes substituted for shorts and stockings in cold weather. One boy in the front row illustrates the style of plus-fours. Notice that some of the
boys hold up their plus-fours or short trousers with leather suspenders. But these are not halters with cross pieces like those usually worn with Lederhosen. Notice that some of the children seem to have taken off their outdoor boots and are wearing slippers for indoors (see the footwear of the boy and girl at the extreme left). In
Switzerland in the public schools there was usually no separation of boys and girls, unlike similar schools in Germany. The Swiss schools tended to be coeduational. Private schools, on the other hand, did usually segregate boys and girls. Notice the picture hung at the back of the room--apparently showing flowers that are amusingly taller than the man in their midst. This could be an illustration from a fairy-tale or perhaps part of a nature lesson.
This Swiss class of 2nd graders (about 8-years old, was photographed in the village of Uitkon Waldegg, a little town in the Zurich canton. The picture was taken on December 12, 1953, just before Christmas. Many of the children wear long stockings for warmth while some of the boys wear plus fours. Notice the boy sitting at the left
on the floor with knee-length argyle socks. The boy in the analogous position, half-kneeling, at the extreme right, wears very brief short trousers with extremely long dark tan cotton stockings that reach so high on his thighs that they almost look like tights. But they are not tights. He is simply wearing a "stocking shirt" or Strapsleibchen with supporters that hold his stockings very tautly in place without wrinkles. Most of the children wear pullover sweaters. A few of the girls wear pinafores, although by no means all of them as was common at many Swiss schools. Their teacher, Frau Emilie Spillmann, stands at the rear of the class. Perhaps some of our German readers can decipher the writing on the blackboard. It looks like a class in reading and writing. Part of the blackboard is covered with a printed text while the other half is in cursive German script.
Uster is district in Z�rich canton located in northeastern Switzerland. This is a German-speaking canton. The capital is Uster, a small city. The school here may have been locared in a village within the district rather than the city. The girls wear brightly colored dresses, jumpers, and skirts with coordinated knee socks. The boys wear a variety of shirts and sweaters with both short and long pants. Some of the boys are barefoot.
This was the Villa Saint Jean, a private Catholic school located at Fribourg. It was founded by Les Marianistes--a Catholic order. Apparently the Marianistes were expelled from France by the secular French Republic. The Marianistes as a result established a boardinf school in nearby Switzerland. There was no school uniform, but there was a dress code and the boys wore suits of their own chosing.
We note a 1942 class portrait from what we thought was Lausanne College located at Villamont, based on an English traslation. We now think the school was Villamont College located in Lausnne. This may be the sane school. We have not yet, however, been able to find any information about the school. Usually a college meant a private school, usually Catholic in France, Belgium, and Swiss speaking Frenh cantons, with both primary and secondary progrms. The portrait is interesting because most of the boys wear knickers. It is unusual to see so many French boys at the time wearing knickers rather than short pants, but this was fairly common in Switzerland. Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It is the canton of Vaud. The city is located on the picturesque shores of Lake Geneva on the biorder with Franbce.
Here we have wonderful photographs from the primary school of Vingelz. This was a village 30 km north of Bern. Normally these village schools did not have names, but rather just known as village school. This the Vingelz school would have known as the village or Vingelz school. It was a small wood-frame school in a rural area. This was a German speaking area and the school would have been taught in German. The wonderful images available give us wonderful insights into both school life and how the children dressed over several years.
Here is a group of secondary school boys at the Winterthur School in the Zurich canton, dated 1929. The boys look to be about 12-13 years old. They wear short-trouser suits with long black stockings and white shirts with open collars. They were called Schiller collsars. One boy in the background seems to wear a necktie which is slightly
askew, and another boy seems to have a white (but striped) shirt. Notice that all the boys wear hightop shoes. Swiss schools didn't usually require uniforms (this is a public school), but the fact that all wear suits perhaps reflects the fact that they were dressed for the photographer. The date of the photo is March 22, 1929.
This is a primary school class (4th grade) taken in Zolikon, Switzerland, on November 21, 1946. Zollikon is a community in the Kanton Z�rich, bordering on the city of Z�rich, so it is now almost a suburb. November, 1946, of course, was a year after the end of the war in Europe. Switzerland was one of the few countries to escape devestation, but was not unaffected. These boys seem to be boys from good middle-class families. Apparently boys and girls were taught separately at this school. Notice the abacus they used for math. The boys are well dressed, but warmly for the beginning of a Swiss winter. Their teacher, Herr B. Wieser, is standing in the back wearing a double breasted suit with a sweater underneath. The boys are all wearing pullover sweaters with short trousers (except for two boys who are wearing very blousy plus-fours). Plus-fours were a popular alternative to short trousers worn with long stockings in Switzerland--and, like short pants and long stockings, sensible for outdoor activities like hiking in the mountains. Two boys on the left have bare knees and wear knee socks or, in one case, what look like three-quarter socks. The other boys wear long tan or beige stockings.
This school was known as the Zurlindenstrasse School, one of the public schools in the city of Zurich. We have a portrait of the Kindegarten class. The photo was taken on the 19th of January, 1939. TThe children are about 5 years old. Notice their toys. The teacher, standing at the back on the left, was Frau Wyss. Notice that the girls all wear pinafores. The boys wear short pants and long stockings, often with sweaters. One boy sitting on the floor in front wears a sailor suit with long trousers. There is another boy in a short pants sailor suit at the extreme left. You can see that the children wear supporters with their long stockings, apparently with what the Germans often referred to as "stocking shirts" (bodices with garter attachments). For kindergardeners these children look very serious. They have proudly displayed their toys in front of them. We don't see too many smiles. The children, of course, are unaware that World War II started in the year of the photograph.
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We have been unable to identify the names of these schools. Hoefully we can eventually lear what schools they were. In some cases we can guess about the cantons involved, in part until the 1970s there were differences in popular fashions between the French- and German-speaking cantons..
A HBC reader tells he remembers reading a woman's blog about her school days. She described a Swiss private high school for girls that she attended in the 1930s. There was a rigid dress code (even
including underwear). The writer, I think, was German. Swiss schools are often quite international. My understanding was that generally German schools did not have uniforms or strict dress codes. I am not sure how accurate this report was or how common strict dress codes were in Switzerland and Germany. My understanding is that it was not very common, but my information on Switzerland is very limited.
HBC has limited information on this school. Only a photograph taken in the 1960s of two boys. They attend a private French-speaking school in Geneva. They wear different colored and styled smocks. One boy wears a back buttoning blue smock. The other boy a side buttoning pink smock. HBC is unsure if the different style represents different age groups in the school or if their mother has just selected different smocks for the boys.
At a Swiss nursery school in a French caton about 1943-45, all of the children are wearing smocks. The Swiss refer to it as an "infant school" rather like a nursery school or kindergarten. Classes for these younger students include both boys and girls. The children are about 6 years old. The school clearly required all of the children, boys and girls to wear smocks. The children wear a variety of styles and colors of smocks. Clerarly there was no rule in the style which was up to the individual parents. Boys wear a variety of clothes--although all wear short pants. This photograph appers to have been taken in the spring, I'm not sure what the boys would have worn during the summer.
At a Swiss primary school in a French caton about 1943-45 many, but not all of the children wore smocks. All the children at this school are boys. These boys are about 8-9 years. Boys at the school had to wear smocks to age 10, but some older boys wore them as well. Almost all the boys wear smocks, but there are a wide variety of smock styles, shoes, and socks. Al of the boys wear short pants, although that was not a school rule. Presumably the school requires the boys to wear smocks.
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