Figure 1.--The book looks to be wearing a costume here. He appears to be posing with a long pipe and Alpine cap. Notice one of the books is upside down.

Many of the images in the albumn were quite playful images. The boy's father seems to have had a wonderful sence of humor. One such image was rather difficult to assess. The image shows the boy in what looks like a costume with a large Perer Pan collar and enbroidered detailing on the front (figure 1). There is jacket like top and matching long pants bottoms. It looks to be a light color, but I am not sure just what color. He wears this costume with a kind of Alpine cap and a very long necked device, possibly some kind of pipe. Hopefully some of our German readers can tell us just what this device was. Of course, we can not be positive that this was a costume. Pergaps they were a pair of pajamas. They do not, however, look like pajamas boys in America wore. I'm not even sure how common pajamas were for boys at the time in Germany. One gets the idea looking at this and other family images that this boy had a wonderful father that was not very strict and the two of them had great fun together. From the available images, the boy clearly enjoyed have fun with his father in this way.

A German reader has some interesting thoughts on this iamge. "I think, the long device is indeed a pipe, but a water pipe (a kind of oriental tobacco pipe). There are three kind of them: Nargile with a silver mouth piece and a long hose, Kalian has a hose made out of wood and Huka has a water container made out of coconut. All of them are having a water container in which the smoke cools off. A hose is leading to it. I assume it's a Kalian, as the part in the middle looks rather wooden than anything else. I believe further, that the alpine hat is a special hat once worn by Arabs and Turks--the fez. Notice the wide collar, if it would be pyjamas, it wouldn't be THAT wide! and the cloth itself. It is too large to be pyjamas, today pyjamas are rather body fitting, too. The clothing could be Arab, as well. At least that would fit well to the water pipe and the hat. I think it was quite common in the 1920s for boys to wear pyjamas. In former times they wore mainly nightshirts. The word by the way is Perisan pajama meaning "cloth for feet". I still don't think that the boy wears a pyjama. It wouldn't fit. If he has a water pipe and does wear a Fez why should he wear pyjamas then? Therefore I guess he's playing an Arab reading a book. Sadly I can't recognise any writing.

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Created: August 5, 2002
Last updated: August 9, 2002