Figure 1.--The German boy here has closly cropped hair. He wears a sailor suit with bloomer knickers. These German children were from Bremen, but the portrait is undated. The studio won an award medal in 1887. This was a common practice in German, to picture their awards on the back of CDvs and cabinent cards. Most studios who did this had more than one medal. We think this means that thev portrait was taken about 1890. We suspect that if they did not win any other medal that clients might begin to wonder what happened. Thus they may have stopped mentioning an 1887 award on the bacl of the mount. We believe that cropped hair may have been more common with working-class boys, but we also see middle-class boys with this style. These children sare clearly middle cklass.

We note German boys with cropped hair in both the 19th and 20th centuries. We are unsure, however, just when in the 19th century that this became a common style for boys. We are in particular unsure about the early 19th century. With the development of photography in the mid-19th century we begin to have a better idea of trends. Early photography under represents the working class so some care much be exercized in assessing the photographic record. We believe that cropped hair was especially common with working-class families. It was not, however, an exclusively working-class style. we also see middle-cass boys with copped hair (figure 1). Many German boys in the late 19th century had cropped hair--especially younger boys. Cropped hair was not universal, but many boys did have this style. We note very large numbers of German boys with these cropped hair styles in school portraits from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main German cropped hair chronology page]
[Return to the Main German cropped hair page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Bibliographies] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Girls]
[Contributions] [FAQs] [French Glossary] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 4:47 AM 12/10/2007
Last edited: 4:47 AM 12/10/2007