Figure 1.-- German boys in the early 20th century commonly wore kneepants ior short pants year round, regardless of the weather. They might add long stockings when the weather turned cold. We are not sure when this photograph was tasken, but would guess the early 1920s.

Most Germn boys wore kneepants at the turn of the 20th century. German boy gradually shifted from kneepants to short pants in the early 20th century, especially after World war I (1914-18). Both kneepants and short pants were garments that boys wore year round, regardless of the weather. Long stockings were often worn with boy kneepants and short pants when the weather turned colder. Some older German boys wore knickers before beginning to wear long pants. We also see suspender pants in Europe, especially in Germany. Boys by the 1930s were beginning to wear shorter cut short pants. German boys after World War II (1939-45) continued to wear short panrs. Many German boys wore Lederhosen. We also notice ski-pants in Germany. Shorts were still popular in the 1950s, but we begin to see more boys wearing lonf pants, at first mostly in the colder months. Long pants were increasingly popular by the 1960s. Shorts were increasingly seen as warm-weather, summer wear. Many of the destinctive types of pants began to disappear in Germany and other European countries by the 1970s when a kind of pan-European style began to evolve, increasingly similar to American styles.

The 1900s

The 1910s

The 1920s

Most German boys wore short pants during the 1920s, often well into their teens. Here both social class and family preferences determined when the boys began wearing knickers or long pants. Middle class boys were more likely to wear short pants longer than working-class boys. We see what we believe to be a gymnasium class in 1927. Almost all of the boys who look to be middle-class boys wear short pants. Notice a German boy, wearing a sailor suit on the first day of class at his school. His pants can be described as short pants rather than knee pants because of their length, and although it is difficult to tell, we suspect that there are no ornamental buttons. The shortness of the pants of course requires much longer black stockings than were worn earlier with knee-length pants. Boys in Europe began wearing short pants rather than kneepants switching to knickers in their teens. Just when in their teens varied from family to family. In Germany and other parts of Europe, the above-the-knee knickers worn in America seem to have been less popular. This was probably because short pants were more popular and the boys wearing knickers were mostly older boys.

The 1930s

German boys continued to commonly wear short pants. Most boys in primary school wore shorts. Many boys continued to wear short pasnts until their mid-teens. This varied somewhat from family to family. Some teenagers wore knickers for a few years before beginning to wear long pants. We notice a typical German schoolboy in 1931 wearing a sweater, short pants, and long black stockings. Notice that these short pants are more or less the same length as the old-fashioned knee pants, but more informal and without the ornamental buttons. Short pants were worn in Germany with both knee socks and long stockings. A 1937 photo shows a German gymnasium (secondary school) with boys wearing both kinds of hosiery with their shorts. Note that many of these boys are wearing the quasi-military Hitler youth accoutrements with their school clothes. School portraits are probably the best source of information as to what boys actually wore in any given period. A good example is a primary school. All the boys wear short pants but some with long stockings and some with bare knees and (probably) knee socks. More boys are wearing kneesocks, but we see many boys wearing long stockings, especially during the winter. Black long stockings are still being worn but the newer brown stockings seem to predominate. Most of the boys wear some sort of sweater or jacket but without necktie.

The 1940s

Short pants worn with long stockings continued to be a major style for German boys.On a wintry day in 1948 during the American occupation of one sector of Germany, for instance, we see a German boy befriended by a G.I. The boy wears quite long short pants with heavy woolen long stockings and a stocking cap. Another shot taken in West Germany the same year shows a German boy of about 12 cleaning an American officer’s car. He wears short pants, long stockings, and a beret. During the Berlin Air Lift in 1948-49 German boys welcomed American soldiers who were in a position to give them candy and other goodies. This photo shows German boys dressed in a variety of clothes. One boy wears shorts with knee socks, another wears suspender shorts (cut quite short) with long brown stockings, and a third boy, only slightly older, sports long trousers. Most German mothers seem to have felt that boys should not wear long trousers until at least 14. In East Germany after 1945 as the Cold War developed , styles of boys’ clothes were very conservative, and most boys seem to have worn their short pants with long stockings, at least in the chillier seasons. In one photo, for instance, we see an East German boy of about 11 or 12 wearing very dark shorts with the H-bar suspenders and black long stockings. With his white shirt, he seems to be quite dressed up for the political parade he is watching. About the same time in West Germany most boys were wearing short pants of some sort rather than knickers. We have an image of a German lad in lederhosen held up by the traditional H-bar leather suspenders. Most boys wearing lederhosen wore them with knee socks, although some boys wore them with long stockings or ankle socks. In the present case, we can’t tell what sort of hosiery is involved.

The 1950s

We see German boys wearing both short and long pants during the 1950s. A few boys still wore knickers, but they were not very common. Throughout the 1950s, German boys, often as old as 13 or 14, continued to dress in short trousers, especially in the early 1950s. The age of boys wearing short trousers declined during the decade. One destinctive fashion in German duing the 1950s were Lederhosen. They were worn by boys af all ages. Lederhosen were a style initially worn in Bavaria, but by the 50s was more widely worn in Germany. More German boys were wearing long trousers by the end of the decade, especially during the Winter. Boys might wear long stockings in the chillier seasons, but this declined as the decade progressed. Some mothers indeed believed that their sons should wear long stockings with shorts even in warmer seasons if the occasion was a formal or dressy one. But for the most part long stockings came to be seen as old fashioned. In conservative, less fashionabe, communistic East Germany in 1951 we see a variety of boys’ trousers including knickers, which were much less common in the western parts of Europe. This is a class of school children about 7th or 8th grade level. Notice that these knickers are quite long and could be described as plus-fours. But one boy wears the more common shorts with long brown stockings. The shorts are typically rather short, thus requiring the stockings to be extra long and, doubtless, worn with a Leibchen. In the western part of the country, short pants with long stockings were typical for boys of a range of ages. In a photo of about 1952, we see a German mother with her three sons, two of them wearing H-bar shorts with long stockings. The smallest boy wears his suspenders crossed in front, which is a somewhat unusual style. The oldest boy wears lederhosen. The wearing of lederhosen with long stockings in the case of a younger teenager is illustrated by a 1957 photograph showing a boy with his bike. One can see the appeal of long stockings for such an exercise if the weather were a bit brisk, but, interestingly, this boy’s hose supporter clasps (he is obviously wearing a Leichen) show under the shorts. Some boys were embarrassed by garters showing, but this doesn’t seem to have been a problem for this boy. A 1955 photo shows three boys from Hamelin leaning over a bridge. These boys seem to wear corduroy short pants with their long stockings (brown and beige) although we can’t be quite certain. Hamelin seems to have been an area of Germany where long stockings with short pants were very common. A boy from this area, who is having a rest against a tree on a rural hike in 1953, again wears short lederhosen with long tan stockings. Interestingly, you can see the white button (or Waschknopf ) sewn to the top of the stocking to which the garter of his Leibchen is attached. Another Hamelin boy playing, presumably with his sister, at the side of a creek again wears the common tan long stockings with his short pants (1955). It is cold enough for a sweater but not really winter time. Notice the high-top shoes which many German boys wore for play or for school in the 1950s. We note German boy of about 12 wearing corduroy short pants with tan cotton long stockings, the length of which is visible because of the way he has disarranged his shorts. The interesting thing about this photograph is the variety of trousers worn by the three children—very long knickers (coming nearly to the ankles) in one case, and long trousers short enough to show the ankles in the other. All these boys seem to be adolescent or on the verge of adolescence. Notice the interesting jackets and sweater represented.

The 1960s

Germanboys during the 1960s we see a greater variety of trousers than in most other countries. Lederhosen, of course, were still very popular, although less so than in the 1950s because if the growing popularity of jeans. The leather shorts, worn very brief with the usual cross-bar leather halter, seem to have been ideal for biking. One German boy wears his lederhosen with a colorful sweater and dark knee socks. Some teenagers in the 1950s wore them almost the way jeans are worn by modern American boys, but this was less true in the 1960s. Younger boys most commonly wore their Lederhosen with halters. Older boys in the 1960s common wore them without the halters often with the knee socks down around the ankles for an more casual look. A German boys here are good examples. Knicker-length lederhosen were less popular than the short-pants style, but they were widely advertised in German clothing catalogs, and were often worn for hiking and mountaineering. They were almost always worn with long stockings, knee socks, or tights. The boy in the catalogue illustration is wearing either patterned knee socks or tights—probably the former since he is wearing a summer, short-sleeved shirt as accompaniment. But tights were also manufactured in patterned and textured styles. We note several American exchange students in Germany adopting the local fashion of lederhosen shorts in the 1960s, but these boys, unaccustomed to the fashion, seem a bit uncomfortable with the style. Note that they wear their shorts a bit too loose and too long to be taken as native Germans. And they have omitted the usual cross-bar suspenders that hold them up and make them somewhat shorter in appearance as well as the customary knee socks.. A German boy wouldn’t have worn lederhosen with a white tee-shirt in the 1960s. The world-famous Schoenberger Choir of Berlin dressed their boys in dark short-pants suits with white knee socks and black shoes during the 1960s. Note that the boys wear white shirts with open collars. Some of these boys are younger teenagers. By the 1960s, however, especially the late 60s most German boys were wearing long trousers dark suits for their confirmation ceremony. These boys seem to be Lutherans rather than Roman Catholics. A decade of two earlier these boys would probably have worn short pants suits with knee socks or long black stockings. But short pants suits had by no means disappeared. In the more remote and conservative areas of Germany, mothers still insisted that boys wear such suits with long cotton stockings. In 1962 we see a younger teenager whose hose supporter has come undone while he was cycling, and he has stopped to reattach the garter. Note how short his trousers are and how long the stockings must therefore be to cover his upper leg. Some boys objected to wearing long stockings in Germany, but many took the style as ordinary and convenient. If you wore long stockings on a chilly day you stayed warm while riding your bike without the nuisance of having to roll up your long trousers or wear a bicycle clip. Some wealthy rural families apparently considered long stockings for boys to be a mark of superior class and decorum. We see a somewhat younger boy in 1962, apparently from a mountain area, wearing long woolen stockings with his short pants. The stockings were probably knitted by his mother to keep him warm in the higher altitudes. You can see from the photograph and the way that the stockings are hitched up on his leg that he is wearing the traditional Leibchen with long garters attached. German clothing catalogues showed a range of trousers styles for boys—both short and long. Notice one style of long trousers with cross-bar suspenders attached. A 1961 catagoue shows long trousers with bib fronts as well as with suspenders. And note also the close-fitting knickers that are offered as an alternative to long pants. These are not at all like the American knickers with blousing at the knee, but much more closely fitting like 18th-century knee breeches. They are meant to be worn with tights or long stockings because they are designed to ride up over the knee in certain positions. Nor are these knickers merely a juvenile style. Men also wore them for hiking and for mountaineering and for a sporty look. They tended to be popular in Bavaria and the mountainous regions of southern Germany and in Austria. Tights had also become popular wear for boys and men in the 1960s. We see numerous catalog pages. They were not only worn as a substitute for long stockings but were sometimes considered appropriate for general leisure wear without shorts or knickers worn over them. They came in bright colors as well as in the more sober browns and beiges associated with long stockings and were popular with boys as well as with girls. They were also an alternative to long underwear in chilly weather. Various styles of short and long pants, casual and less so, appeared in German catalogues during the 1960s. Notice the appearance of the practical and durable corduroy. Boys in Germany sometimes wore their short pants with ankle socks and sandals. We have an interesting photo on HBC that shows a German boy dressed in this fashion while his English guest wears the common schoolboy British shorts with knee socks neatly pulled up and worn with garters. We have a nice contrast here between two different national styles.

The 1970s

German schoolboys wore both short pants and long trousers in the 1970s. We note a secondary school class shows more boys with longs than with short pants. But lederhosen were still being worn. Notice the boy on the right who wears his lederhosen shorts with the traditional cross-piece halter and argyle knee socks and sandals. Another boy wears shorts with ankle socks. In both cases, the shorts are extremely brief. All the boys wear informal shirts without ties. The older style formality in school dress seems to have almost totally died out. Notice the dark glasses on one boy, a detail that we would never have seen in pre-war schoolboys. Of course German boys wore shorts for soccer, occasionally with tights to protect their upper legs from the chill. A German boys’ soccer team may have been photographed in the early 1980s rather than the 1970s, but it illustrates the German custom of wearing tights for soccer games. It is interesting that in the present instance only some of the boys have adopted this practice.

The 1980s

THe 1990s