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For this homework assignment we had to interview our grandparents, acquaintances other persons and had to find out what the sixties meant for these people. We should also focus on about four of the listed aspects of the sixties.
The first person I interviewed was my mother's mother, who was around 25 years old in the sixties. Her main memories of the sixties were her marriage in the year 62 and the birth of my mother some years later. The second person, I interviewed was a neighbor called Mrs. Wirth who was around 16 years old in the sixties and did mostly remember being in school in the sixties.
In the sixties love and romance between boys and girls were not as easy and free as today, at least for my grandma, as her parents were very conservative and so she and my grandfather had to meet in secret. In Mrs. Wirth's family it wasn’t a huge mess around to meet with a boy or girl. Everything was discussed by the family, although it should be mentioned that no one ever chose a person that wouldn't fit in to the family. Important factors when it came to choosing a boyfriend were the young man's income and the security he could ensure.
School life in the sixties weren't as it is today. My neighbor Mrs. Wirth was a pupil in a boarding school for girls, where she had school until the late evening. She told me that in her school life, the teacher were very strict and everyone was respecting them. Furthermore no one dared to step out of the line.
People in the sixties, or at least the persons I interviewed, didn't go to many movies in the cinema. Not everyone did have a TV at that time and the program variety was also relatively limited, so watching films at all was relatively rare and the fact that everything was in black and white didn't change anything for the better, I assume. On the other hand did probably contributed to the habit of families to gather in the evening in the same room to talk and to be together, something that pretty much doesn't happen today anymore.
Another mentioned aspect was that teenager or young adults did not necessarily have a car, while today it's pretty common, for many young people to have one. This was especially common in rural areas or towns. As a replacement for a car, bikes and, in towns, sometimes public means of transport were used. One reason for this could have been, that many people just didn't have the money to buy such expensive objects like cars. It was pretty normal to live very modest and to save up your money. Nor would people overdo things and borrowing money or taking loans wasn't as common as it is today.
Other differences, family-wise, were for example that most women didn't actually take a job, but married very early and then stayed at home for the rest of their lives. What should also be mentioned is that the grandparents of people at this time tended to live together with their children in one house or very close to their children.
Grandmas were also different in the sixties from what they are now. Their look was different, as they were often dressed in an apron dress and did wear their hair in a bun.
Another difference between the countryside and the urban area, was that people in the country did not have any holiday and began working in very early years. Families in this area also had many children, compared to a family in a bigger town. In around Christmas time people would also visit each other looking and inspecting the other families Christmas tree.
What was also mentioned – multiple times actually by my grandmother – was that many young girls took dancing lessons, although this didn't occur that much in the countryside. Dancing was different, too, for instance did people only dance in pairs and the man was always asking the woman for a dance. Furthermore there were no discos, but dance halls and parties at home.
Some various other aspects of the sixties being mentioned were, among some others, radio-phonographs (Musiktruhen; cupboards with a record player and a radio inside it), Rock 'n' Roll, card games like canasta and rummy, who were popular among the people and corner shops (Tante-Emma-Läden), whose successors were the supermarkets of our times.
To sum it up I would say that the sixties did differ in many ways from today with regard to culture and technology.
„ What was school and school life like in the sixties?“
In the early Sixties all students did what the teacher told them to do. There was an unconditional obedience from students to their teachers. If they tried to act against the rules they got really bad punishments. The difference between schools in the sixties and schools today was for example the schooltime. In the early sixties students and teacher had to go to school from Monday to Friday but they didn´t have any afternoon classes. Everyday before the first lesson started at 8:00 am students had to pray.
„What about the fashion in the sixites?“
In the first half of the Sixties everyone used to wear a kind of uniform. The dress code containted a cotton pant and a clean shirt. But there didn´t exist any kind of fashion. At the end of the sixties there was a big change in the fashion. Some revoluntinary teenagers started to wear bluejeans full of holes, American jackets and long hair.
„Music, movies and literature of the sixties“
In the Sixties a new kind of music came into existence. The „beat-music“ . The most important and affecting groups were „The Beatles“ and „The Rolling Stones“. The most famous and most popular movies in the Sixties were the James Bond movies“, the Edgar Wallace movies“ and „Karl May movies like Winnetou. Colour tv and cinemascope cinema became more and more popular. Especially the kids in the sixties liked to read upcoming teenage magazine and comics like „BRAVO and Dr. Sommer“, „Superman“, „Badman“, „ Lucky Luke“, „Micky Mouse“ and „Asterix and Obelix“. Other very popluar books were the books by Karl May.
„Ideals and Idols of the sixties“
Idols of the sixties were predonminantly persons from the world of entertainment like Elvis Presley, James Dean and Marlon Brandon. But the then president of the United states, John F. Kennedy was also a really big idol of the revoluntionary teenagers. In the early sixties the ideals of the germans were especially obedience, humility, punctuality and decency. But in 1968 there was a change of ideals. The new ideal was to be against it all!
W-Seminar project of Deutschhaus Gymnasium, Würzburg &
Maria-Theresia-Gymnasium, Augsburg
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Contact richard@richardhwinter.de