Figure 1.--We still see younger German boys wearing pinafores in the 1930s, mostly in rural areas. It was, however, a conventin that was declining in popularity..

German boys appear to have worn pinafore smocks in the early 20th century, before World War I (1914-18). We have many examples of this given the exoplosion of amateur photography with the snapshot. he styles were very plain which appear to be a kind of boy-styled pinarore. So far we have only noted these pinafores in the early 20th century. We believe that the image on the previous page is such an example. As a result, we believe that the image shows a pre-World War I example of German boys wearing this pinafore smock at home. Of course it is always possible that our prelimanary assessment may be flawed based on HBC's still limited number of early European photographs. After World War I they appear to have declined in popularity. We do note images of younger boys wearing them in the 1920s. The snaphot here was taken in 1929 (figure 1). These garments appear to have persisted longer in rural areas. We note girls commonly waring them to school, but not boys. A good example here is the Altenau primary school in 1927. We think these pinafores for boys generally disappeared by the 1930s, although some very young boys mayt have worn them. A German reader who was a boy in the 1930s-40s reports, "I was not aware of „pinafore“ = „Schürze“ in Germany. In my youth, 1935 up, I suppose they were no longer commonly worn."

Created: 7:20 PM 11/13/2008
Last updated: 7:20 PM 11/13/2008