German School Activities: School Lunch


Figure 1.-- Here a group of Berlin schoolboys are having lunch in a classroom during December 1931. We believe it is a primary school. We see a group of boys eating lunch at their desks. These boys also wear the almost mandatory long stockings in winter time. Interestingly, the teacher is reading to the boys as they have lunch so as to keep order and not waste precious educational time. Both classes are only boys. They seem to be aged from about 9 to 12 years old which suggests this was not a class group. We are not sure how usual it was to have meals served in public schools. We think this may have been the result of the depression. But the boys don't look raggedly dressed. They seem reasonably well dressed. This is one of the few school images we have showing this. And we have quite a large number of school images. Note thatthe children only have soup to eat. The children who briought lunch to school may have been separated from those whose parents ciould not afford to prpare lunch for their children. Source: Bundesarchiv. Bild 102-12782.

We do not have a lot of information on German school lunches. TYhere must have been differences between primary and secondary schools. Almost all German primary children walked to school. Thus they lived close enough to school to go home for lunch. We believe that many did, but we also know that many children ate their lunch at school. This is because countless portraits show the children carrying a lunch case in addition to their book satchels. The fact that not all the children have these satchels cofirms that some children ate lunch at schools and others did not. We suspect that the parents were given a choice. That was how it was at my American elementary school in the late-40s and early-50s. As far as we know, German primary schools did not have cafeterials until well after World war II. There may have been differences between city and village schools. We suspect that many if not most village children went home for lunch and that many city children ate lunch at schools. This is, however, largely a guess. As far as we know, German elementary schools did not have cafeterias. We see a few images of primary children being served lunch in their ckassroom, but this may have been a temporary matter during the Depression to make sure the children got a least one good meal. Hopefully our German readers will know more. The situation must have been different in secondary scjool. Many German children did not attend secondary school, especially working-class children. This meant that the schools wre often a considerabke distance from home. Some of the children may have walked ot used bicycles, but often they to take public transport likr trams. This mean that many students could not go home for lunch. Even so, I do not think that many secondary schools had cafeterias. Presumably the children brought their lunches to school. A complication here is thst some schools may have operated on shifts, although we think that was mostly after World War II. After the War, Germans built many more modern schools. This was in part because so many schools were destroyed by the Allied bombing. We think that many of these new schools had cafeterias, although this needs to be confirmed. We no longer see the lubch satchels to any extent after the War. Another question is if there were differences between East and West Germany. West Germany of course was more affluent, but East Germany incouraged women to work more and took on greater responsibilities in child care where it was necessary to provide meals.







HBC-SU






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Created: 7:19 PM 10/31/2010
Last updated: 7:19 PM 10/31/2010