German Knickers: Age Trends


Figure 1.-- This boy was Walter Gessner who was photographed probably in the 1920s wears knickers. He looks to be about 16 years old. Notice the bkack long stockings and high-top shoes.

Boys and men after the early-19th century mostlyn wore long pants. Knickers or knicker-like garments first appeared in the mid-19th centutury. They were ar first worn by younger boys, often pre-school boys or boys just beginning primary school. Gradually older boys began wearing knickers, but until the 1890s, most German boys beyond the primary school years wore long pants. This begins to change in the 1890s as knickers and knee oants bgan to become more popular. It is not until after World War I that knickers become more asociated with older teenage boys and knee oants / short pants more with younger boys. Walter Gessner here is a good examole of an older boy wearing knickers (figure 1). Knickers seem to have been a kind of transitinal garments for teenagers between short pants and long pants. We see adults at the same time wearing them as a kind of sporty garment for outdoor outings. We see the samthing in Britain at the time. The NAZI take over of Germany (1933) resulted in manyn more boys weraing the knickers/ski-pants during the winter. Thus we ee some younger boys weatring knickers and more boys that wore shorts in summer, wearing knickers in cold weather. This continued during the War years (1939-45). After the War, short pants bcome more prevalent and worn by boys that might have worn knickers before he War. We see some boys of various ages wearing knickers in the early-50s and even-mid-50s, but the style had pertty much died out by the end of the decade. An American reader reports in the 1950s that "Knickers were very much a young man's and teenager's style, as I recall. It was popular with boys and men who rode bicycles because long trousers (unless worn with bicycle clips) tended to get caught in the bike chains." We no longer see boys of anyn age cwearing knickers by tyhe 60s, except for below he knee Lederhosen.







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Created: 1:12 AM 12/13/2013
Last updated: 1:13 AM 12/13/2013