This is a picture of my uncle Fritz, my father’s brother. Fritz died in May 1943 at the age of 21 in the Caucasian Region in Russia, but this is another story, which will be told at a different time.
My uncle Fritz, about 1923
When my grandma showed this picture to me for the very first time, I couldn’t believe that this was my uncle Fritz. Obviously the picture showed a little girl with a dress, which moved to an old wicker chair which still stood in my grandma’s kitchen when I was a teenage girl. My grandma Anna told me that until my father’s generation all little boys and girls used to be dressed up with little dresses, the boys until they were 3 or 4 years old. This was the age when they got their first short trousers.
85 year old dress my grandma made for her son Fritz
Grandma fetched an old hand-knitted dress from her wardrobe and showed it to me. She told me: „ When we ere little children we wore such dresses on Sundays. The boys got a blue satin ribbon around their waist with a big bow and the girls got a pink one. So we looked fine.“
Under the dresses the children wore – nothing! This saved a lot of laundry for the mothers who were busy in the household and on the fields. When the children wanted to pee, they hunched up near the manor pile. And if they were too little for managing this on their own, older children helped them by lifting their dresses. This way no diapers were needed and the children learned how to stay clean without any special potty-training. Well, nobody cared a lot if little accidents happened, because the homes didn’t have any carpets.
My grandparents with the boys (they are wearing short trousers and stockings!) about 1930
When the boys became 3 or 4 years old they got their first pair of trousers, which was an important event in their lives. During summer they only wore socks and boots. During winter-time they also wore thick hand-knitted stockings, which covered the whole leg. The stockings were fastened to the undershirt with buttons.
My uncle Fritz at the age of 3 or 4; about 1925
This is my uncle Fritz at the age of perhaps 3 or 4. He still looked like a little girl, but you can see that he is already wearing short trousers under his dress. There is no single picture of my father wearing a dress. It seems as if he never wore dresses, but little overalls my grandmother sewed for him like you see one on the picture.
My father in his little overall about 1926
Later he also wore short trousers, mostly in Bavarian style, little lederhosen. Also Fritz wore lederhosen. The picture shows the two brothers in the left foreground near the reverend.
The boys in lederhosen in front of the church
When the boys were confirmed at the age of 14 they got their first long trousers like the grown-ups. From this date on they counted as nearly grown-ups. School was over and the boys had to attend an apprenticeship, sometimes in a far away town like my father, who left his home at the age of 14.
And the girls? They kept on wearing dresses their entire lifetime. Until they went to school they still wore nothing but undershirts under the dresses. The first slips were worn when they attended school at the age of six. But before 1900 there have been also women who never wore slips, not because they would have been obscene, but because they were too poor to afford some. Needless to say that girls and women must have suffered a lot from the cold in fall and winter in their dresses! Mostly in the 60ies the clothing of girls changed a lot: Girls and women started to wear jeans and trousers more and more. I remember Hanne, the daughter of our neighbors at Duisburg, who wasn't allowed at that time wearing trousers or jeans without a dress or skirt over them, because wearing trousers without a dress that covers the front-zipper would be obscene. Until this time sports-trousers for women have had zippers at the side and not at the front. Us other children in the neighborhood already wore the new chick trouser suits. My friend Elke has had one in red and I had a black one with huge silvery buttons. Today I can't imagine not to wear jeans every day.
At the end here is a picture of my father and his brother which makes us rolling on the floor of laughter every time we look at it: They played country constable (my father, the little one) and hussar (Fritz, the taller one) at the backyard of our house. By the way, the clothes were made by my grandma. The two boys mostly wore the same clothes.
Playing country constable and hussar, about 1930 or before
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Pictures: All pictures belong to Georgia; all rights reserved; don't use them without my permission
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