Old German costume

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Hoffmann von Fallersleben in old German costume, painting from 1819
"German National Women's Costume", Journal of Luxury and Fashions 1815

Old German costume (also: German national costume ) was the name given to a clothing fashion that emerged in Germany between 1813 and 1815 and was very popular with women and men of different social classes during the wars of liberation as an expression of the anti-French German national feeling. This fashion was so provocative and inflammatory that it was partially banned by the authorities during the demagogue persecution , for example in the Karlovy Vary resolutions .

Appearance

The new fashion built on the elements of contemporary fashion and supplemented it with reminiscences of the 16th century , the age of the Reformation and Martin Luther , which was perceived as typically German. Added elements included slit and puffed sleeves and, for the women, ruffles. The most important item of clothing for men was a long, tight-fitting skirt, which was often worn with the collar wide open. There were also wide-cut trousers and often a large, velvet beret . The predominant color was black, the color of the uniforms of many voluntary corps during the Wars of Liberation. Especially among the young men there was a rebellious demeanor as well as a shoulder-length hairstyle and the wearing of beards.

Goal setting

This new fashion should prevail against the still prevailing Empire style, which was called "French fashion folly". It is said that as early as 1800 the Austrian officer Count von Sztarray complained to the University of Heidelberg that he had seen students who dressed in the manner of the French enemies:

"It cannot escape the eye of a genuinely thinking man how conspicuously several young gentlemen at this university signal themselves to the shame of the staid German nation following the example of the last expulsion of the worst French class in dress, moral behavior, gestures and public decency."

Prominent porters

Leading advocates of German national fashion were Ernst Moritz Arndt and Caroline Pichler . This new fashion was seen as a sign of rejection of foreign rule, but also of resistance to the old-style monarchical form of government and a free, democratic attitude. After the founding of the original fraternity in Jena in 1815 , it became the identification mark of the members of student fraternities , for example the Giessen blacks , who wanted to stand out from the more traditionally minded, country-based corps students .

The most prominent wearer of this fashion was the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig, who later became King Ludwig I.

Contemporary description

Student in old German costume, 1852

The poet Wilhelm Hauff , who himself was a fraternity in Tübingen in the 1820s , describes in his "Mittheilungen from the Memoirs of Satan" in the chapter "The Studies of Satan at the Famous University… .en" from the year 1825 a student in the advanced semester , dated back to 1819:

“He was a tall, well-built man between the ages of 24-25, his hair was dark and may have been cut according to today's fashion, but because the Studiosus shied away from the expense of having it sheared, it hung untidily around his head, but he tried often styling it with five fingers from the forehead. ... a large beard grew from the temples to the chin, and a Henri quatre, reddened by beer, hung around his fine lips . ...

I could not really know about the lower parts of the face, especially the chin, because they stick deep in the tie. The young man seemed to have devoted far more care to this garment than to the rest of the suit; This bandage of black silk, which was about half a shoe high, was drawn without wrinkling, from the chin including the sternum, and in this way formed a fine masonry on which the head rested; His clothing consisted of a yellow-white skirt, which he called "Flaus", in tender moments probably also "Gottfried", and which he shared with him about food and drinks; this Gottfried Flaus reached up to a span above the knee and closed tightly around the whole body; It was open on the chest and showed as much as the tie showed that Herr Studiosus didn't need to be well provided with laundry.

Loose, wavy trousers of black velvet followed the outer garment; the boots were delicately shaped and used immense spurs of polished iron to foil.

On his head the studiosus had hung a piece of red cloth in the shape of an inverted shard of flowers, which he knew how to balance against the wind with great skill; it looked strange, almost like if you wanted to cover a large head of cabbage with a small drinking glass. "

"The new old German": German is my sense, and my garment / made of the finest cloth ... from Engeland. Caricature on nationalism from 1820

criticism

The old German costume and the attempt to establish it as the German “national costume” was not without controversy among the supporters of the liberal opposition to the reactionary regime of the time of the “Karlsbad Decisions”. The poet Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , who wore them himself at times, called it the “dark man's costume” in a poem from his collection “Unpolitische Lieder” (probably in reference to Ulrich von Hutten'sdark man's letters ”) and scoffed:

Don't wear the night in your robe
Better chase them out of the country!
Darkness and sadness
There is enough in our time.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Unpolitische Lieder, 2nd ed., Th. 1, Hamburg 1842, p. 73.