Figure 1.--I wore a smock called a "Fuhrmannskittel" when I was a litte boy. I know this for a fact because I have a photograph of me at age 3 years wearing one and holding a duckling. It was a blue smock.
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Figure 1.--I wore a smock called a "Fuhrmannskittel" when I was a litte boy. I know this for a fact because I have a photograph of me at age 3 years wearing one and holding a duckling. It was a blue smock. |
Smocks are often more associated with French than German boys. German boys, however, also used to wear smocks--but usually younger boys than in France. I wore a smock called a "Fuhrmannskittel" when I was a litte boy. I know this for a fact because I have a photograph of me at age 3 years wearing one and holding a duckling. It was a blue smock. It would have been about 1936. The photograph was taken near Hildesheim. By my time, school age boys no longer wore them--at least to school. I believe that earlier some younger boys did wear smocks to school. In those days, however, some workmen still wore these Fuhrmannskittel. Woodsmen (yes burly lumberjacks) in the Black Forrest wore them. I am sure your American Paul Bunyan would not have been too impressed. But woodsmen cutting fir trees in the Black Forrest and rafting them down the Rhine to Rotterdam wore them. These are the same smocks in which the father in the Hansel and Grettle story is often pictured, so we know that they were worn for years by Black Forrest woodsmen.
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