Individual Swiss State Schools: Ottikon Primary School

Figure 1.--This is another Swiss primary school. The children look to be about 10 years old, which would mean they are 5th graders. The school is simply called Ottikon School, the same as the town, which is in Zurich canton, one of the German-speaking Swiss cantons. The date of the photo is March 19, 1952, late winter just before Spring, which you can tell from the bare limbs of the trees in the background. Image courtesy of the CF collection.

This is another Swiss primary school. The children look to be about 10 years old, which would mean they are 5th graders. The school is simply called Ottikon School, the same as the town, which is in Zurich canton, one of the German-speaking Swiss cantons. The date of the photo is March 19, 1952, late winter just before Spring, which you can tell from the bare limbs of the trees in the background. The young teacher is named Herr Burri. Notice that almost all the boys wear short trousers with separate button-on elastic suspenders. Many German and Swiss boys wore suspenders with their shorts because belts don't work as well with narrow hips and suspenders help keep the children neater with their shirts tucked in and the trousers don't sag uncomfortably. Some boys wear sweaters and others just open-collared shirts. Many of the girls wear pinafores. We see one boy on the extreme left wearing the baggy plus-fours, which (in this case) look almost like plus-eights since the knickers come down so low, almost to his ankles. But long stockings with short trousers are much more common, obviously worn with Strapsleibchen or stocking-shirts (bodices that button down the front and have four elastic supporters attached, two in front and two on the sides). Such bodices keep the stockings neatly in place without wrinkles. Notice the boy in the front row (third from left), whose stockings are perfectly smooth almost as though he were wearing tights. But of course they are stockings, not tights, which didn't come on the market in Europe until about 1959.

Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Return to the Main individual Swiss alphabetival school page]
[Return to the Main individual Swiss 1950s school page]
[Return to the Main individual Swiss school page]
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Created: 5:14 PM 3/21/2009
Last updated: 5:14 PM 3/21/2009