Figure 1.--Here we see a boy playing with his toys, perhpas after Christmas. He is not idetified, but we think he is German. The toys look more German than American. The knee socks are dark banded socks.

We are not sure about the colors of knee socks German boys worn in the 1950s. The black and white photography provides few clues. Some boys wore knee socks done in solid or flat colors. We see mosly light shades which would probably have been in various shades of tan or grey. We do see some dark knee socks which would be black or navy blue, but they were not nearly as common as the lighter shades. We also see white knee socks, but they seem to be primarily for dressy occassions like First Communions. These dressy outfits tended to decline notibly after the 50s. This was in part because we see fewer boys dressing up and wearing suits as they had done previously. And by he60s we begin to see more long pnhts uits. Patterened knee socks for some reason became very poular after the World War II in the late-1940s and 50s (figure 1). We rarely see ghem before the War, but they are quite cmmon after the War. We see both boys and girls wearing patterned knee socks, but we think that they were most common with boys. We see a wide range of patterns. Not all boys wore patterned knee socks. We see plain-colored knee socks as well.