Figure 1.--This CDV portrait shows two Berlin brothers. The younger boy wears a tam with a knee pants sailor suit and long stockings. Germany at the time did not have much of a navy. French sailors wore caps vaguely similar to the tam the boy is wearing. His mother probably saw it as aailor cap. His older brother wears a suit with very small lapels and what look like long knee pants. (Notice the buttons at the knee hem.) The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken in the 1880s. The studio was H. Noack which appears to have been a prestigious studio.

We note some German boys wearing tams. We are not entirely sure about the chronology yet, but the time frame seems relatively narrow. Based on the photographic record we see them about 1880-1910. We note tams in the late-19th century by the 1880s. We can confirm that boys wore them in the 1880s. The boy here is a good example (figure 1). The mother here probably saw the tam the boy is wearing as a sailor cap. (French sailors wore somewhat similsr caps.) I have no idea about Prussian/Germzan sailors, but Germany had a very small navy at the time. They may have appeared earlier, but our archive is not extensive enough yet to confirm this. We are not yet sure how common they were in the late-19th century, but we have found several examples. We note them at the turn-of-the 20th century. We also note them being worn in the early-20th century before World War I (1914-18). The boys on the previous page look to have been photographed in the 1900s. We do not see German boys wearing tams after the War. We do, however, see quite a number of German boys wearing berets in the inter-War era and even in the 1950s after World War II.