Figure 1.--German children in the early 20th century almost universally wore long stockings, although not all year long. They were worn into the 1950s. Most Germans who grew up before the 1960s remember them. I'm not sure how to date the snapshot here. It could be the 1910s, but probably the late-1910s or early 20s. A German raders thinks probably the 1920s. She thinks the garments, especially the squate cut blouse look like the 1910s, but this looks like a rural scene and the boys may be wearing older, hand-me-down clothes. The black long stockings look more like the 1909s than the 20s.

We have found quite a few accounts from Germans who recall wearing long stockings as children. Long stockings were commonly worn by German children, both boys and girls, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Most Germans who grew up before the 1960s remember them. We have collected some accounts about individual German children who wore long stockings. Some of these accounts are specifically about long stockings. Others are more general accounts in which long stockings are mentioned.

The 1900s

Unfortunately we do not yet have any personal accounts about German boys and long stockings in the early 20th century. Long stockings were very widely worn by German boys at the time.

The 1930s

Long stockings were still very common in Germany, especially during the winter. We see fewer older boys wearing them, but they continued being very common for younger boys and were commonly worn with short pants.

Max (1930s)

A HBC reader interviewed a German man named Max in the city of Schwerin. Our German reader has made many valuable contributions to HBC and is also submitting valuable interview such as this one. He remembers in the 1930s wearing a short pants sailor suit with long dark stocking. This as his outfit for Church and specil occassions.

Unidentified Boy (1930s)

I am a German born in the early 1930s. There were five of us children in the family. I can remember some of the detils of the clothes I wore as early as 4 years of age. I some times wore long stockings under short pants as a small child, but this was not common, although other boys did so commonly.

Pierre (1930s-40s)

In my childhood tights had not yet been invented. For fastening long stockings, I and all my contemporaries had to wear a so-called Strapsleibchen (a Leibchen with garter straps), usually made of strong linen material and buttoned in the back. It was not very easy to take off after Mother had helped me put it on. The garter straps attached to the Strapsleibchen were usually four in number, two for each stocking in front and back, and very tautly stretched. I can still remember a Strapsleibchen that I hated from the outset. It was made of leather and rather hot and uncomfortable. Strapsleibchen were worn either beneath or on top of our normal underwear. I had to wear long stockings with short trousers, and because my mother didn’t want any exposed bare area between my underwear and the tops of my stockings, I had to wear underpants made of lining material (normally in blue but sometimes in pink or green if I had to wear hand-me-down underwear that had belonged to my sisters) that tended to peep out under my trouser legs. The rubberized elastic legs of the underpants had sometimes lost their elasticity so that garter clasps could become visible. Usually the stockings were handknitted and sometimes scratched unpleasantly depending upon the quality of the wool. There were also cotton long stockings, worn only on holidays, usually in brown, black, or who knows what color. With athletic shorts worn on top I had even more discomfort from the Leibchen and garters. Sometimes I had to help with the housework and was required to wear a smock apron on top of my other clothes or else a rubber apron if we were doing plastering work. These are only a few details from my childhood. It is fun to think back, even if at that time I experienced such things as long stockings worn with garters and a Leibchen as a hardship.

Reinhardt Rudel (1937)

Reinhart recalls the long stockings he wore when dressing up in his sailor suit which was reserved for both. He found both scratchy, especially the sailor suit. We have a full account of boy's clothing in 1937 in Swabia by Professor Reinhardt Rudel, who reminisces about the Bleyle sailor suits that he wore as a boy in 1937. The firm of Wilhelm Bleyle manufactured boys' sailor suits in the 1920s and 1930s in Stuttgart--sailor suits that were widely worn all over Germany, especially by middle-class and upper-class boys. When the Bleyle factory closed many years afterwards, Professor Rudel was moved to write a valuable and highly detailed account of his boyhood clothing and how he disliked having to wear a Bleyle sailor suit with long stockings. Our HBC reader has freely translated or in some cases paraphrased the most interesting parts of Rudel's lengthy account below.

Aryaman Stefan (1930s-40s)

I recall wearing long stockings from my earliest menories at age 5 year. Starting in about 1938 the short trousers worn by boys became shorter and shorter. I recall from my own childhood the shorts worn in the 1930s and 1940s. Shorter trousers were considered sporty, and boys liked being sporty in that period. The Nazis discouraged the wearing of long stockings with shorts because the custom seemed too girlish, and we therefore see few pictures of Hitler Youth uniforms with long stockings, although they were occasionally worn for warmth even within that movement. In my memory, beginning in the 1930s, most boys held up their long stockings by two elastic straps with button-holes worked into them. Older children often had the elastic straps with the more modern button-and-wire clasps sewn onto them. Younger boys and also some older boys had sewn onto the tops of their stockings two white laundry buttons which buttoned onto the elastic straps. This arrangement was less elegant but more childlike.

The 1940s

Georg (19??)

When I read about boyhood memories of wearing long stockings with short trousers a flood of memories awakens in me. Getting dressed was complicated in those days. I had to wear the usual Leibchen which was a kind of undershirt made of sturdy cotton with tapes that ran over the shoulders and down to firmly sewed buttons at the waist. These buttons then attached to elastic straps (or garters) which in turn were fastened to the tops of the long stockings. [It was common to have laundry buttons sewn onto the tops of the stockings for attachment to the garters, but the newer-style metal clips at the ends of the hose supporters were perhaps even more usual.] I wore such a Leibchen to the age of 12 and even sometimes when I was 14. I lived with an aunt (a sister of my birth-mother) because my parents had gone abroad for an extended stay. When the first cool days of autumn arrived, I experienced the usual hassle of being made to wear long stockings with the necessary support garment. Instead of long trousers my aunt insisted on my wearing long stockings. This didn’t surprise me too much because my younger cousins had to wear the same underwear and stockings. My Leibchen had been reconstructed from a disused ladies’ corset although the stays were missing. It was closed with many small hooks and fitted with its very sturdy material closely and firmly around the body with laces in back. I can never forget the first time that my aunt tightened the laces. This corset-waist (or Leibchen made out of an old corset) did not fit too tightly, but there was definitely less freedom of movement with this garment than with the traditional boy’s Leibchen. The elastic garter straps were wide and very firmly sewed on. These “Goldzack” style of garters still exist even today. I had three such Leibchen (or underwaists) up to the time of my final exams and on principle wore long stockings until primary school ended. After I had finished school, however, having reached the age of 15, I no longer had to wear short trousers on a regular basis. But there were exceptions even at that age, and a few boys still were wearing long stockings into their middle teen years in some of the moral rural parts of Germany.

Unidentified Boy (1948)

We note an unidentified German boy photographed with his school class in 1948. The boys wear a variety of clothing, including short pants, knickers, and long pants. The boys wearing shorts wear both knee socks and long stockings.

The 1950s

Rural Boy (1953)

This boy and his family is a good example of how rural children dressed in the Post-World war II era. He was photographed in the Black Forrest area about 1953. He looks to be about 8 years old. The boy has a stocking or watch cap with a playful pom. I'm not sure what color it was. He wears a sweater with long short pants, perhaps corduroys, and woolen long stockings. Note the suspenders (braces) that he wears over his sweater. His shoes are hightops which were still common in Germany during the early 1950s--especially in rural areas. In the early 1950s one or two dugout water basins still commonly stood in front of each farm house. Many of these farmers were very well to do, some even rich. Their clothes and their children's clothes wereoften very simple--but commonly sturdy.

Georg (1950s-60s)

Long stockings by the 1960s in many parts of Germany had become old-fashioned and out of style, especially when worn with short trousers. I was born in 1949 and until First Communion all boys in most parts of Germany wore short trousers, often with long stockings. In our area, a region of small towns, most schoolboys in primary school wore long stockings and short lederhosen at least up to the age of 10. By the early 1960s, however, the long stockings and garters for them got hidden under long trousers. My aunt who raised as a step mother had very conservative attitudes about all this. Long trousers became an emblem of greater maturity. But younger boys in the 1950s were kept conscious of their childhood by being outfitted in short trousers, and this was especially true if the shorts were combined with long stockings, as was frequently the case.

Karl

A German reader tells us, "I wore long stockings with a Strapsleibchen during the 1950s. Many of my classmates were embarrassed by having to wear long stockings with garters because the style was associated with rural and Eastern Germany particularly and therefore with a somewhat straitlaced conservatism. The garters, which could sometimes be detached from the Leibchen (they were often butttoned on rather than permanently sewn on), had a few subversive uses in school. Some of the boys made slingshots out of their garters and annoyed teachers by firing wadded up paper missiles at them or other children when their backs were turned to the class. Another advantage of the style was that boys could hide cheat sheets inside their stocking tops (hidden under short trousers but easily accessible to us boys when seated behind our desks). With this technique we could get through tests more easily. While many of us resented our parents making wear long stockings with garters, we nevertheless took a certain "bad-boy" advantage of the situation. Long stockings were more convenient than long trousers or tights in certain in-between seasons when the temperatures varied and we appreciated their warmth in chilly weather."

Mathias (1954-56)

A British reader tells us, "One of my room mates at my German Swiss boarding school in 1954-55 wore long stockings on very cold days, but only under his Bluejeans. He preferred them to long underpants which I and the other boys wore. We were 3 boys to a room and all 3 of us were 13 at the time. I was particularly fascinated because I was English and had never seen such a thing before. His long stockings were light brown or tan color and held up by nothing more elaborate than straps of a sort of canvas material that came up over the waist band of his jeans and clipped on to the sturdy leather belt holding up his jeans. This boy was from Bavaria and called Mathias, and he was my best friend at the time. ...."

The 1960s

Gudrun (1960s)

I can contribute something to the interesting subject of wearing long stockings with a Leibchen as a boy. I was 14 and my brother was 12 in 1962 when we went to stay with my aunt in a village near Aalen in southern Germany while our parents traveled abroad for professional reasons. For me it was self-evident that I should wear a jacket and proper clothing and, for nearly the whole year, long stockings––especially in this region where the weather is almost always cool. For my aunt, who was then in her middle 30s, it went without saying that my brother would put on long stockings with his short lederhosen as well as the appropriate and practical underwear to hold up the stockings correctly. Aunt Annaliese laid down the law regarding his clothes and would allow no discussion of such matters. So my brother had to resign himself not only to a new school and new friends but also to the unalterable reality of variegated and coarsely textured long wool stockings, a Leibchen [or underwaist] with garters, and warm underpants. The fact that only one other boy of his age wore short trousers to school had no effect on my aunt’s decision about his clothes. But after school many boys in that region wore short lederhosen and long stockings for play, and such dress was quite common in the more rural areas. Aunt Anneliese brought us up very strictly, and we remained with her until the end of our school days and until our parents had returned from abroad. My brother had to wear short trousers until he was 15 and from October until almost June must also put on long stockings with them. At the age of 13, he got long trousers for school, but the long trousers did not exempt him from the long stockings and the necessary Leibchen, which he wore underneath for warmth. Tights were too expensive and considered too trendy or modern [by my aunt]. So one could tell in that part of the country who was old-fashioned and who was more liberal in attitude by whether the family dressed their sons in long stockings or tights. Aunt Annaliese was certainly not liberal in her feelings about boys’ clothes, and it was clearly understood that our rear ends would suffer painfully if we failed to obey her. It was nevertheless a beautiful time we spent with her.

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Created: 7:06 PM 5/8/2007
Last updated: 11:01 PM 9/5/2009