Figure 1.-- These Munster brothers had their CDV portrait taken in the 1860s. They wear identical cuur-away jacket suits with vests and long pants. Norice the rounded-crown hats.

We note rounded-crown hats in the mid-19th century. The Munster brothers here were photographed in the 1860s. We note Franz Xaver Mayer photographed about 1862. We are not yet sure, however, how common they were. They may have been worn into the late-19th century, but we can not yet confirm this. This was a boy's style, primarily for school-age boy. The basic elements of these hats were a rounded crown and a narrow brim. The arch of the crown varied as did the brim. We call these hats rounded-crown hats, but the arc of the crown in fact varied widely. Some were not as rounded as others. An example of a hat where the crown was sligtly vertical at the side is an unidentified boy in 1864. There were both soft and hard versions, but we have not yet found the soft version in Germany. There were a varirty of styles. They were made in vaious materials, including felt and staw. We tend to associate these hats more with America, but this may be as a result of our relatively small archive of 19th century German images. A reader tells us, "About hats in Germany. The rounded-crown hats here are a style that you don't see anymore. This type in Germany was called Melone. But it had to be made of a textile material, A felt hat is a Filzhut. A straw hat is called a Strohhut. If the hat was part of a Bavarian outfit it was called a Lodenhut. The plural of Hut is Hüte. Hats with a wide brim were Kalabreser (as worn by carpenters)."

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Created: 6:36 PM 1/23/2008
Last updated: 7:52 PM 1/23/2008