Figure 1.--Here we see a Berlin brother and sister in 1918. They clearly came from a comfortanle middle-class family. This shows that very close cropped hair was still a style woen by middle-class boys in the late 1910s. The children seem to be about 8 and 10 years old. The boy wears the familiar sailor suit with striped dickey, knee pants, and black long stockings. The girls wears an embroidered dress with white long stockings.

We believe that social class was a factor in German hair styling here, including styles for children. We tend to see these cropped hair cuts more with working class families than middle-class families. This may have varied over time. In particular by the 1910s and 20s, middle class children were less likely to have the shortly cropped hair. Also there were other factors. Boys from military families were more likely to have cropped hair cuts. Here we are just speculating as to the social class factors. Hopefully our German readers will be able to provide more insight. One of our German readers writes, "Social class certainly was a strong factor, many children, saving the money to go to the barber, time by mother / father to bring and supervise the small child at the barber's shop. Middle-class families could afford normal hair cut by a barber."

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