Lederhose
Lederhose is the general term for short or long pants made of leather . Lederhose are more widespread than traditional lederhosen , motorcycle clothing and in the leather scene .
Bavarian lederhosen
historical development
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Leather has been used as a hard-wearing material for trousers for centuries, with the shape being adapted to the respective fashion. While long trousers (→ sansculottes ) prevailed among the urban population after the French Revolution , the cut, derived from the French culottes , was retained among the rural population as practical work trousers for men and in some cases also for women. The leather came from domesticated animals, mostly domestic goats or domestic sheep , as hunting wild animals (such as deer or chamois) was a privilege of the nobility. The trousers were mostly dyed black with blue wood and without decorations such as embroidery .
In the course of the 19th century, however, leather was more and more replaced by loden , and trousers also became longer among the rural population. By the end of the 19th century, the short leather trousers had almost completely disappeared as work trousers. The teacher Josef Vogl lamented the disappearance of what he believed to be "ancient" costume and founded the first Bavarian costume association , the Association for the Preservation of Folk Costumes in Leitzachthale , together with five regulars' table friends on August 25, 1883 in Bayrischzell . When Vogl and his friends had short lederhosen made according to their ideas at a Säckler , they were mocked by the locals in Bayrischzell. The church immediately took a stand against the so-called Kniehösler and forbade them to participate in processions. In 1913 the short- trouser associations were declared immoral by the archbishop's office in Munich .
However, the Lederhosen friends received support from King Ludwig II , whom Vogl made aware of his concern by letter. The Wittelsbachers were enthusiastic advocates of the idea of a Bavarian folk costume. This idea arose during the Romantic era and enjoyed great popularity among the upper class in many parts of Europe. The aristocracy organized "farmer weddings" in which the guests dressed up as peasants. However, the specially designed costumes were usually so magnificent that farmers could hardly afford them. Artists such as the painter Ludwig Richter , with their unrealistic works, also consolidated the notion of regionally differentiated folk costume among the upper class. In order to spread this idea among the lower classes, Ludwig's father, King Maximilian II , issued an ordinance on June 1, 1853 to “raise the national feeling, especially the national costumes”. Maximilian appeared in the hunt, like the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and previously Archduke Johann , in a gray-green jacket and leather trousers and also equipped his hunting assistants with this combination.
Ludwig replied to Vogl's letter with a benevolent letter and asked all district and district offices to establish associations for the preservation of traditional costumes. This gave a great boost to the newly created traditional costume movement, which the church finally bowed to. In many cities in Bavaria (but also in Austria, with the support of the Austrian imperial family), traditional costume associations emerged which adopted the idea of lederhosen as part of regional folk costume. Even in Munich enthusiastic citizens founded a mountain costume association. This finally brought about the change from the alpine work trousers to the festive self-expression of the urban bourgeoisie. The lederhosen, which were now mainly worn for display purposes, were more and more lavishly decorated with ornaments and the traditional costume clubs began to lay down typical club styles. However, the traditional costume clubs only covered a comparatively small part of the population. The general breakthrough came after the First World War with the advent of Alpine tourism as a mass phenomenon. The lederhosen became leisure pants for those who came to summer who always adapted to changing fashion tastes.
Pope Pius XI received in 1924 a Chiemgau men’s delegation in their mountain range. The short lederhosen, the jerks, were admitted to an audience for the first time and thus “socially acceptable”.
The National Socialists tried to detach the lederhosen from the Alpine regional reference and made them an all-German national costume. It was necessary to protect the “inherited paternal costume” as a “relic from ancient times” against appropriation. In 1938 Jews were banned from wearing lederhosen in public. This ban was gradually extended to other ethnic groups or people of different regional origins, such as Poles or Eastern workers . In the post-war period , lederhosen were the most popular children's clothing for boys in Germany and Austria. It received great approval, both from the parents and from the children. Its era was only replaced by the triumphant advance of jeans , which, like lederhosen, had its origins in work clothes. In contrast to lederhosen, jeans mostly met with sharp rejection from the parents' generation and were associated with youth rebellion. With the advent of rock 'n' roll music in the fifties and the youthful movement that went with it, the leather pants got a completely different cultural background. In this subculture, wearing of leather pants - especially black - was very common. Since the seventies also among rock musicians and lovers of this music. Black leather pants are also often worn in the punk and metal scene .
Forms and diffusion
Typical for traditional lederhosen are the embroidery and the flap , the trouser door , which supposedly goes back to the pubic capsule , a common part of men's clothing from 1400 to the second half of the 16th century in Europe . On both sides, or only on one side, mostly on the right, a knife pocket is usually attached to the lederhosen , which holds the nicker , the hunting knife, another knife or a carter's cutlery.
The traditional lederhosen come in three forms:
Knee breeches
It comes from the French culotte and was widespread throughout Central Europe. A special feature that shows the origin of the knee breeches is the “butt seam”. In Eastern Bavaria, the Salzburg region, Tyrol and Upper Austria, it is often made as a plate seam (e.g. Salzburg plate ) across the buttocks, whereas in Allgäu, Styria and Carinthia this seam is usually vertical. In current traditional costume fashion, the plate seam is often found in industrially manufactured knee breeches. With trousers you wear long stockings that you pull up over the knee and then turn over. Only then do you put on the trousers, which are tied under the knee, and so the trousers stocking is prevented from slipping out of the trouser leg.
Short leather pants
It originated from knee breeches in the Eastern Alps. It is worn there with the mountain costumes. In order to have more legroom at work and when climbing in the mountains, woodworkers and hunters shortened their knee breeches. Short lederhosen with plate seams are rare. It should be emphasized that the leather shorts in Germany were only widespread in southern Bavaria on the edge of the Alps. North of Munich and in the rest of Germany, it was not part of the traditional costume.
Boot leather pants
It extends at least to the middle of the lower leg and can be tucked into boots or socks. This includes B. the Dachauer Lederhose . They are boot leather pants with very tightly cut long legs that are tied at the ankles. The waistband is cut very high.
The lederhosen in particular are part of the Bavarian and Austrian mountain costume. While the short, knee-free lederhosen were worn to work and hunting , the knee breeches are more of a holiday pants.
Leather suspenders with a front crossbar can be worn with knee breeches and shorts, sometimes with a V-shaped center insert that is buttoned at the front. In South Tyrol , suspenders made of fabric are also often worn. For Short are usually brogues worn. Loferl ( socks ) are traditionally worn without socks . The most widespread form of lederhosen in Bavaria is worn with continuous, knitted knee socks with Miesbach traditional costumes .
Sometimes a quill embroidered satchel, a kind of wide belt , is worn with lederhosen. Its former purpose was primarily to keep money.
In rural regions such as the Allgäu , the southern Chiemgau , the Bavarian Oberland and the Berchtesgadener Land as well as the Salzkammergut , lederhosen are still part of everyday clothing and are not only worn by members of traditional costume clubs. The lederhosen from these regions are usually handmade and custom-made. They are painstakingly manufactured with great attention to detail and are durable and wearable for a lifetime.
In the Swiss Alps there are leather pants in Appenzell and Toggenburg , where the herdsmen to Appenzeller costume wearing bright yellow breeches, unlike the farmers in the same area, are part of their costume dark brown cloth pants.
materials
Lederhosen fulfill various functions. In order to be able to do justice to these, different materials are used for different purposes. Traditional lederhosen are usually made from chamois-tanned deerskin or other soft leather. The red deer leather often comes from Australia or New Zealand due to its injury-free quality . So-called goat leather is often used for industrially manufactured trousers. This term, favored by the leather industry, is intended to suggest to the customer that it is made from the leather hides of alpine goats such as chamois or similar. In the absence of this and the increased demand, for example at Oktoberfest, the term goat is a synonym for domestic goatskin. In contrast to this mass-produced goatskin, cowhide is used for slightly higher quality products. The trousers are usually decorated with white, green or yellow embroidery . Machine embroidery is often used on cheaper lederhosen. It differs from the more expensive hand embroidery mainly in that the leather is pierced, while with hand embroidery it is only pierced and therefore the embroidered fields bulge in relief. A quality feature of elaborately processed, handcrafted and correspondingly high-priced lederhosen is also the sack seam today . With this seam, the leather edges are visible to the outside, as a yellow seam , sewn together and light leather strips are also placed between the leather edges.
The traditional lederhosen, also known colloquially as “shorts”, are knee-length. This enables the loud clicking noises when Schuhplatteln , a traditional Bavarian and Alpine folk dance. Laponial leather (a nubuck leather ) is sometimes used as a material today .
Traditional lederhosen have a very long shelf life. With regular use, however, the initially rough and matt surface wears off. Such older lederhosen with a bacon shine are colloquially known as "Krachlederne". Modern tanning processes mean that many types of leather can be washed in the washing machine in order to avoid this. The less chemicals there are in the leather, the easier it is to wash the leather pants (machine-washable leather pants).
In contrast to traditional lederhosen, hunting lederhosen must fulfill the function of leg protection. Since these are basically work trousers, the price also plays a not insignificant role. But highly tear-resistant, it protects against thorns and other injustices of nature. Due to the industrial production carried out in the factory, cowhide trousers remain affordable. Another requirement for hunting trousers is that they are relatively silent and, above all, that the leather is machine washable. In the lower price segment, leather types made from buffalo or split leather are used, although buffalo does not necessarily have to be cheap in terms of quality. The quality also depends very much on the processing of the leather in the tannery . In the case of imported products in particular, there is often a problem with the additives in the leather and the colors.
Other forms
Chaps
Chaps (from Spanish chaparajos) are leather trousers without buttocks that cowboys wear when riding. The chaps are designed to protect the legs from the horns of cattle and thorn bushes.
Functional lederhosen or leather jeans
Lederhosen have always been work and protective pants. The most original of these may have been used as hunting trousers. Ötzi made use of the advantages of leather around 5000 years ago. In the craft, variants of the guild made of leather are used. For riding there are special riding lederhosen without an inner seam. What they all have in common is the requirement for protection and the function to which the leather and the cut are adapted. Today there are leather jeans in the typical five-pocket cut that, like jeans , are worn as normal casual clothing. Leather shorts or bermudas are made as pleated trousers or also in five-pocket style. Leather hotpants are tight, short-cut shorts.
Uniform
The officers of the Munich Police Rider Squadron wear brown leather riding trousers.
All service dog handlers trained at the Hamburg Police Service Dog School wear black leather jeans instead of the usual textile uniform trousers. This includes the service dog handlers of the Hamburg police and the Hochbahn-Wache Hamburg. Lederhosen are also available to employees of the dog control service.
Furthermore, the male employees in the police service of the Hamburg Police can wear black leather jeans with a white shirt and leather jacket.
Children's and youth clothing
As everyday clothing for boys of school age up to around the age of 16, the short lederhosen were probably introduced by the migratory birds at the beginning of the 20th century . The traditional lederhosen were mostly stripped of all elaborate decoration and reduced to the essentials.
After the First World War, it gradually came into fashion all over Germany and became particularly popular after 1945. The leather shorts only disappeared almost completely with the advent of jeans in the 1970s, but in recent years, especially in Bavaria in connection with traditional costumes, they seem to enjoy a modest revival outside of the Oktoberfest.
The "classic" short boys' lederhosen are usually made in gray raw leather or in green smooth leather. It does not have the narrow central slit on the front that is typical of 'normal' trousers, but is characterized by the characteristic large, curved bib, which extends over almost the entire width, is sewn to the trousers on the underside and, strikingly, only through the top two - as a special feature at a certain distance next to each other instead of placed on top of each other - large buttons are closed at the corners. In this regard, it has retained the most important feature of the non-leather long trousers, which were common until the nineteenth century and which were also characterized by a bib instead of a slit in the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon.
The two front pockets on either side of the bib are often decorated with oak leaves. In addition, there is usually a smaller, pointed pocket for a pocket knife further down on the right in the middle of the side seam. The ends of the trouser legs, which are equipped with small laces - probably a decorative remnant of the knee bands of knee breeches - are usually turned inside out. At the back, a central gusset allows the waist size of the lederhosen to be slightly reduced or enlarged, and thus to match an increasing or decreasing waist size.
Special straps are usually used for these lederhosen, which can be adjusted to the correct length with the help of buckles. For a firmer grip and to prevent the shoulder straps from slipping off, they are connected to the front of the chest with a wide oval cross-piece, often made of a somewhat harder material, usually with a (sometimes glued-on white) deer or edelweiss motif buttoned crosswise at the back. The two buttons for the bib and the four identical buttons for the straps are attached to the pants with small leather straps for extra reinforcement.
Thanks to the straps, which are quite close together as a result of this crossing on the back, the leather pants are usually much higher at the back than at the front, as another special feature of this model, while the front, when you stand upright, as the pictures show, the button space between the (thanks to the Crossbar much further apart) rather lowers a bit downwards. In general, the fit of the lederhosen is unusual in the sense that, as a successor to traditional lederhosen, they have been lengthened a good bit upwards compared to jeans, for example, and the upper edge consequently extends to the ribs. The origin of this is probably that the lederhosen were once work clothes in the country, and in this way it was possible to avoid grain and the like during the harvest. Ä. could get into the pants because, if you bent down, the extended bib automatically lay against the lowest rib and thus closed the otherwise resulting 'gap' between pants and stomach almost seamlessly.
From the 1950s onwards, a more modern model of lederhosen became common, especially in northern Germany, often made of dark green or black smooth leather, with two zippers on the bib replacing the two traditional buttons; as leg-length leather trousers, this model is also known as carpenter trousers. Instead of the traditional straps, a belt was usually used. In the south, the classic model with button placket and straps lasted a little longer for young people because of its conceptual proximity to traditional lederhosen.
Since the 1970s, the simple, short lederhosen have mostly only been worn by boy scouts , usually in the more modern version in raw leather (less smooth leather) with double zippers and almost always with a belt, only very rarely with straps. For many scout groups it is still an integral part of the costume today, without having made it part of the “prescribed” gulf .
In northern France there is still a kind of Catholic "scout boarding school" in Riaumont in the city of Liévin ( canton Liévin-Sud ) near Lens , where all students wear short leather pants (with double zips or buttons).
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Francine Roze ea: L´Élegance et la Nécessité, Costumes de Lorraine, Collections des Musées de Lorraine, Catalog réalisé à l´occasion de l´exposition "L´Élegance et la Nécessité, Costumes de Lorraine", Metz 2001, p. 63, 141.
- ↑ Simone Egger: The Wiesntracht phenomenon: Identity practices in an urban society, dirndls and lederhosen, Munich and the Oktoberfest. (= Munich ethnographic writings. Volume 2). Herbert Utz Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0831-7 , pp. 55-57.
- ^ A b Franz C. Lipp , Eva Bakos , Tracht in Österreich: Past and Present. Christian Brandstätter Verlag , 2004, p. 193.
- ^ Karl-Sigismund Kramer : Volkskultur - A contribution to the discussion of the term and its content. In: Folk Culture - History - Region: Festschrift for Wolfgang Brückner on his 60th birthday. (= Sources and research on European ethnology. Volume 7). Königshausen & Neumann , 1992, ISBN 3-88479-709-3 , p. 16.
- ↑ Gereon Blaseio, Hedwig Pompe, Jens Ruchatz: Popularization and popularity. DuMont, 2005, pp. 106-107.
- ↑ Simone Egger: phenomenon Oktoberfest Tracht: identity practices of an urban society; Dirndl and Lederhosen, Munich and the Oktoberfest. (= Munich ethnographic writings. Volume 2). Herbert Utz Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0831-7 , p. 25.
- ↑ Simone Egger: phenomenon Oktoberfest Tracht. 2008, pp. 27-28.
- ↑ Schwandorfer Tagblatt. February 14, 1924 In: Ludwig Weingärtner: Catholic German Women's Association, St. Jakob branch, Schwandorf. Festschrift. 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-045823-1 , p. 60.
- ↑ Ulrike Kammerhofer-Aggermann: Dirndl, Lederhose and summer vacation idyll. In: Robert Kriechbaumer (Ed.): The taste of transience: Jewish summer retreat in Salzburg. (= Series of publications of the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr.-Wilfried-Haslauer Library, Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies Dr.-Wilfried-Haslauer Library. Volume 14). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-99455-8 , p. 329.
- ^ Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann : Childhood in the fifties. In: Dieter Bänsch: The 1950s: Contributions to politics and culture. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3-87808-385-8 , pp. 179-181.
literature
- Franz J. Grieshofer, Christian Brandstätter, Franz Hubmann: The Lederhose - A Brief Cultural History of Alpine Trousers. Verlag Fritz Molden Edition, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-217-00928-2 . (New edition: Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Husum 1996, ISBN 3-88042-762-3 )
- Simone Egger: The Oktoberfest costume phenomenon. Herbert Utz Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0831-7 .
