Figure 1.--The first communion class was at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Thomasberg, a town in the lower Rhineland near Heisterbacherrott, south of Bonn. The boys are all dressed traditionally in formal black suits with short trousers and black long stockings and black shoes. The girls all wear white junior wedding dresses and wear a white wreath of flowers in their hair. White of course symbolizes purity. Note that one boy in the center of the front row wears a sailor suit with long trousers, apparently an alternative to the short pants and long stockings worn by the other boys. The photographer has placed him in the center. The ages of the boys seem to vary a bit, we would say 7-9 years of age. Apparently parents had some say in the age of the child presented for first communion, but there were also lessons from the catechism that had to be learned at the instruction of the priest. Note the priest with biretta on his head at the rear. This part of Germany is devoutly Catholic. First Communiins organized at schools were more likely to have children of the same age.

Both boys and girls in Germany tended to wear rather formal outfits for First Communiion in the 1950s. There were still a lot of confessional single gender schools. The boys usually wore a dark or colored suits, almost always short pants suits. Some boys had matching dark caps. We see white suits, but they do not appear to have been very common, especially at the beginning of the decade. Neckwear varied. We see both dar ties and white ties. Somev boys did not have neckwear. A few boys wore long pants suits, but they were not very common. And we see a few boys wearing sailor suits, sometimes with long pants. Hosiery changed during the decade, al least for the boys. At the beginning of the decade, black long stockings were still common for the boys. By the end of the decade we see mostly white knee socks. Curiously we do not see boys wearing either black knee socks or white long stockings. Nor do we see many boys wearing ankle socks of any color. We note girls wearing junior wedding dresses, always whites, We note both white long stockings and white knee socks. White stiockings weredominant at the beginning of the decade, but we see knee socks by the end of the decade. The boys could wear the suits for other occassions, but the girls dresses were outfits that could not be worn for many other occassions. They were essentially worn once and then became a keepsake. Thus the appearance of such dresses were a sure indicator of German's new-found prosperity.

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Created: 7:09 AM 8/21/2011
Last edited: 7:09 AM 8/21/2011