*** boys clothing wedding outfits individual countries Germany








Boys' Wedding Outfits: Countries--Germany


Figure 1.--Here we see a German wedding during the 1930s. The groom appears to be a naval officer. The boy here appears to a flower boy rather than a ring bearer. I'm not sure how common that was in Germany. I'm not sure what the structures in the background are. Could they be tents associated with the wedding celebration?

We do not yet have much information on German weddings. We do not know about any specifically German wedding traditions. Hopefully our German readers will provide us some insights. Most of the images we have seen look rather like weddings in other Western European countries. We have a few German wedding images, but not yet enough to assess German weddings in any detail. Germany was both Protestant and Catholic thus there were a range of traditions involved. I assume that there were major differences between Catholic and Protestant weddings and of course before World War II there were Jewish traditions. There was by the 20th century a strong socialist movement, thus we suspect that many Germans, especially working-class Germans, were married outdide the church. Middle-class Germans almost always would have had church weddings. The clothes worn by children were affected of course by social class. Boys were more likely to have costumes in the weddings of affluent families. We note costumes for both ring bearer or ushers. We also note flower boys, although weare not sure how common that was. We see a German 1932 wedding on the previous page. It looks rather like a modest income, working-class family family. We suspect that it represents a good idea of how many Germans married in the 1930s. Here we see a more elaborate wedding of a naval officer.

Traditions

We do not yet have much information on German weddings. We do not know about any specifically German wedding traditions. Hopefully our German readers will provide us some insights. Most of the images we have seen look rather like weddings in other Western European countries. We have a few German wedding images, but not yet enough to assess German weddings in any detail. Germany was both Protestant and Catholic thus there were a range of traditions involved. I assume that there were major differences between Catholic and Protestant weddings and of course before World War II there were Jewish traditions. We do note children dressed up and performing ceremonies at weddings. We are not sure, however, if these were German traditions or imported from Britain and other countries.

Social Class

There was by the 20th century a strong socialist movement, thus we suspect that many Germans, especially working-class Germans, were married outside the church. Middle-class Germans almost always would have had church weddings. The clothes worn by children were affected of course by social class. Boys were more likely to have costumes in the weddings of affluent families.

Costumes

We note a variety of clothes and costumes worn for weddings. There were costumes for both ring bearer or ushers. We also note flower boys, although we are not sure how common that was. Sailor suits were popular outfits for boys to wear to weddings. Men wore suits to weddings. Boys also dressed up for weddings, but that did not always mean wearing suits. By the 1920s, a white shirt and tie or even an open-neck white shirt was sufficent. Most of the wedding images we have found show boys in their regular clothes, perhaps with some formal touches like white knee socks. Some boys wear suits while other boys just white shirts. I suspect that many working-class German boys after World War I did not have proper suits or they might have worn them in weddings.

Chronology

We have obly a few images of German weddings, but we will archive what we find here. We have no information on the 19th century, but we have begun to collect some information on the 20th century. We see a German 1932 wedding. It looks rather like a modest income, working-class family family. We suspect that it represents a good idea of how many Germans married in the 1930s. Here we see a more elaborate wedding of a naval officer (figure 1). The boy, however, does not seem especiall dressed up. On another page we see a wedding at the end of World War II.








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Created: 11:50 AM 2/25/2006
Last updated: 11:15 PM 4/17/2009