Children were feminine?
At the Deutsches Historisches Museum, there were some cool items. We saw the first globe made, propaganda posters from WWII, and missile shells. But something I found really interesting is that young children in the late 19th century and early 20th century were dressed in, well...dresses. Think that's a little girl in the painting? It's actually a boy. They wore pink and had long hair, the opposite of gender norms today. This painting is actually of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his family. This shows something very important of the time: the military was highly regarded. Being in the military was seen as a high status symbol, and it was very popular for children and men to wear uniforms as everyday attire. There is even a funny German story about a true event where a poor man who couldn't get his passport bought a military uniform from a secondhand store and marched into the city hall pretending to be an officer and overtook it without being questioned. He took command of the army in Berlin, and at the end of the day, his identity was only realized when he demanded a passport be made. The Germans tend to be serious people, but in this case they thought this was so funny that they let the man go and just called it a day.
Fun Fact: Kaiser Wilhelm II was the German Emperor and King of Prussia who was forced to abdicate when US President Woodrow Wilson refused to meet with anyone who was not elected by the people, and only after his abdication did the Treaty of Versailles get worked out.
