Figure 1.--This portrait of a class on their first day of school is undated. It looks to us like the early 50s, but we are not positive. The teacher looks to be wearing a uniform, but we are not positive about this either. This is a rather rare photograph in that usually the children had individual portraits taken, but portraits of the entire class were less common.

After World War II we note fewer formal studio portraits and more family snapshots. As far as we can tell the custom of gift cones ( Zuckertute )continued to be very popular. We continue to see large numbers of First Day children with their cones and very pleased about it. One aspect of this we are not sure about is that we do not know if it continued in East Germany as well as West Germany.

Unidentified School (1955)

This is an interesting photograph of some of the children from a German primary class in 1955. Notice the goody cones. They were by the 1950s a well established German tradition for the children starting school. The mixed class of boys and girls together, and the use of long stockings (on the two boys in the front row). Some of the other boys wear long baggy ski-type pants, perhaps with long stockings underneath. But I think the ski-pants had become an alternative for schoolboys during the chilly months. The two boys in the front row wear brown long stockings with a Strapsleibchen (four garters with commercial loop and rubber button clasps as opposed to the earlier elastic tape garters with graduated button-holes that fastened to buttons sewn onto the top of the stockings by mothers). Long stockings were becoming less common by 1955, but they were still being worn.

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Created: 10:10 PM 8/12/2007
Last updated: 8:02 PM 10/25/2008