Figure 1.--

A HBC reader tells us, "I was browsing around the Internet the other day and came across an account in German of a guy called Wilhelm (no family name given) who was responding to a blog by a friend who was reminiscing about his boyhood in the late 1940s and early 1950s about having to wear short pants. Wilhelm then responded with an interesting account of his own experience, which I've translated with the help of a dictionary and a colleague whose German is a lot better than mine. I was going to include the German text as well as the translation, but just now I couldn't seem to find the original, and I think it might be no longer available although I'm no expert in navigating the German part of the Internet. I think the writer must have come from a very conservative middle-class family, given the details, since having to wear short pants up through the age of 16 seems pretty strict to me, especially as late as the 1950s. But I can believe it because we have read other accounts of the same kind. The most unusual aspect of the account, I think, is the back-buttoning Leibchen, which most of our HBC information tells us was chiefly for younger children of 10 or 11 or less. But maybe it makes sense because I've also read in another place that this style of Liebchen was necessary if the stockings were very long and came up high on the leg and that it was sometimes worn by older boys for skiing because of the need for warmth and protection higher on the legs in the Alps. Wilhelm tells us that his shorts came only to mid-thigh, so that might explain it. Anyway, it seemed to me an interesting account that we could usefully add to our collection of German personal experiences."

A memory of wearing short trousers in Germany, written by Wilhelm (9 November 2006) in response to a friend named Klaus, who had raised the subject in a letter of reminiscence.

Your mention of short pants triggered my memory. I recall that they were regarded in my family as part of our education, part of our rite of passage from boyhood to manhood during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although we sometimes wore long trousers to school, we were expected to dress in shorts at home as a sort of family obligation until the age of about fifteen or sixteen. For Sunday attendance at church I had a suit with short trousers that I had to wear up through the age of sixteen. Some older boys, who were friends of mine had to wear short trousers only on Sundays as special dress-up clothes. But in our family we wore shorts at home as well as in church. It was just assumed that we would wear these trousers with long stockings, never darned or with holes, usually gray or brown in color, and I recall that the seams in back had to be straight and the stockings held up firmly with no wrinkles at the knees. The shorts came down only as low as the mid thigh. As children we didn’t so much mind wearing shorts in the privacy of our homes, with only our parents or close relatives present, but it was a different matter when visitors or strangers arrived and saw us in such clothing as older teenagers. We thought of it almost as a punishment, although my parents regarded it simply as proper discipline and something that boys should do out of respect for their elders. On Sundays we always wore the back-buttoning style of bodice with four garters attached, and this created something of an embarrassment because it was hard to fasten in back without help from Mother, who always did up it for us. She also unbuttoned it at night when we were getting undressed for bed. As we got into our later teenage years, the bodices that we had worn as younger boys became somewhat tight. We used to point this out with the idea of getting her to release us from bondage, but she simply made new, larger bodices that fit more comfortably since most of our underwear was home-made. And complaining or whining about the family dress code just made matters worse and stiffened her resistance to change. It was a big thrill for me at the age of sixteen to be allowed to abandon my Sunday suit with short pants and have a new one with long trousers. This happened one Christmas about 6 months after I had turned 16. And at that point I was freed also from the humiliation of the back-buttoning bodice because long stockings were no longer necessary. But, looking back upon the whole experience, I now realize that our parents believed in making it quite plain to their boys that they were still children at the age of fifteen or so and still very much dependent upon their families for sustenance, shelter, deportment, and general guidance. Making us always wear short trousers at home was from their point of view an important part of that lesson.”

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Created: 10:09 PM 6/7/2008
Last updated: 10:09 PM 6/7/2008