Figure 1.-- Here we see an unidentified German boy with his bike. His cap looks a little differentthan most school caps and he does not seem dressed for school. Notice the round pin on his cap, that suggests it is not a school cap. This boy looks to be about 13 years old. He wears a dark sweater with buttons at the shoulder and quite long knee trousers (already being referred to as "shorts" in the 1920s) with long black stockings and high-top shoes. Notice that he wears a white shirt under the nearly turtle-neck sweater, which covers most of his collar. One viewer of this photo thought that perhaps the boy did messenger service of some sort because of the bicycle and the visored cap. We do no see where he would have carried the telegrams or signature pads. And he seems a little young to be a messenger boy. The bicycle was an expensive item in Germany. Working class boys did not have them, although their fathers used them to get to wotk. Amiddle-class family that could have aforded a bike for a son almost certaunly would hsve kept a boy this age in sdchool. The photo seems to date from the early-1920s.

While primarily a school cap, we notice some caps styled a little differently that may not be school caps, although this is not always easy to tell from the available photographic record. One reader thinks that they may been worn by messenger boys. Fir some reason, however, we do not see nearly as many German messenger boys as we see in the American photographic record. We don't think this was very common because we don't see many examples in the photographic record.

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Created: 4:31 PM 12/24/2010
Last updated: 4:31 PM 12/24/2010