Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentified mother and son in Prague during 1939. The precise date is not given, but it was defintely afrer March when the Germans invaded. The teenage son is escorting his mother during a shopping expedition in downtown Prague. The boy is very fashionably dressed in a short pants suit with dressy shirt and tie, knee socks, and well polished shoes. He gives a very dressy, rather upper-class impression. We wonder if they might be ethnic Germans. If so they were now privlidged citizens in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The boy would, hiwever, in a few years if he was German be drafted into the Deutsche Wehrmacht. Click on the image for a fuller discusion.

Czech boys commonly wore suits at the time the country achieved indepebdence after Workd war I. We notice Czech boys wearing the same styles of suits we see in Germany where styles were apparently set. We suspect that styles in Prague and the other large cities were virtyally identickl with Germany. We do not see any important diffrences. Sailor suits were popular in Czechoslovakia even though the countrty and Bohemia before it never had a navy. Perhaps sailor suits were somewhat less popular in Czechoslovakia than Germany. And sailor suits may have been more popular among the large German minority. Given our relatively small archive, however, we can not yet make a definitive assessment. And perhaps Slovakia was a little differenht because it was more rural and somewhat less prosperous. We note both single- and double-breasted suits, akthough sinfle-breasted jackets seem the most common. Boys wore knee pants, short pabts,knicker and long pants with these suits. Shirt pants became more common during the inter-War era abd were widelyvworn after Workd war II. We see more biys wearing long pants suits by the 1960s. But as in thre rest of Europe, by this time we see fewer boys wearing suits.

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Crerated: 6:15 PM 5/3/2012
Last updated: 6:15 PM 5/3/2012