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This Swiss class of 2nd graders (about 8-years old, was photographed in the village of Uitkon Waldegg, a little town in the Zurich canton. The picture was taken on December 12, 1953, just before Christmas. Many of the children wear long stockings for warmth while some of the boys wear knickers or plus fours. Knickrs were not very common for children this young in the 1940s. Here more than half the boys seem to be wearing them.
Notice the boy sitting at the left
on the floor with knee-length argyle socks. The boy in the analogous position, half-kneeling, at the extreme right, wears very brief short trousers with extremely long dark tan cotton stockings that reach so high on his thighs that they almost look like tights. But they are not tights. He is simply wearing a "stocking shirt" or Strapsleibchen with supporters that hold his stockings very tautly in place without wrinkles. Most of the children wear pullover sweaters. A few of the girls wear pinafores, although by no means all of them as was common at many Swiss schools. Their teacher, Frau Emilie Spillmann, stands at the rear of the class. Perhaps some of our German readers can decipher the writing on the blackboard. It looks like a class in reading and writing. Part of the blackboard is covered with a printed text while the other half is in cursive German script.
A German reader writes, "I am able to read most of what has been written on the left blackboard, at least the part that the children are not blocking. It says in German, 'Erika, Urs und Margritli spielen in der Stube. Erika sagt: Margritli, du mußt jetzt krank sein. Komm, wir legen dich auf diese zwei Stühle. Wir decken dich zu. Du bist der Doktor ...." That means, "Erika, Urs and Margritli are playing in the room. Erika says: Margritli, you are sick now. Come, we lie you down on these two chairs. We cover you.
You are the doctor ...." (That would be Urs, a boy). The rest is not visible, because the children are blocking the rest of the story. This is the kind of thing one would expect for children just beginning to master lreadung nd writing skills. We would guess that the teacher has written this on the board for the children to copy. Our reader also reports, "I cannot read what has been written on the other blackboard. Only on top, 'Uitkon ... den 13. Dezember 1953.' The rest is too vague."
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